🍜 Ramen Profitable

An idle game about being an indie app developer. Ship apps, survive App Review, fight churn, quit your day job. Built for Shipaton 2026.

Category targets: Best Game · HAMM Award · Catvertising · #BuildInPublic Ship plan: see SHIPPLAN.md — App Review submission deadline Sept 10.

Run it (5 minutes)

npm install
npx expo install expo-haptics @react-native-async-storage/async-storage react-native-svg
npx expo start

Scan the QR with Expo Go on your phone. The game runs there, but a development build is required for real RevenueCat Test Store purchases.

Architecture

App.tsx                     root: custom dock nav (no react-navigation — deliberate)
src/state/gameStore.ts      zustand + AsyncStorage persist. ALL game logic lives here.
src/systems/useGameLoop.ts  ticks (500ms/5s/22s) + offline earnings via AppState
src/content/content.ts      every idea, event, rejection, upgrade — add content here
src/components/             ui primitives, notification stack, overlay host
src/screens/                Home / Code / Store / Chirp
src/monetization/purchases.ts  RevenueCat wrapper, graceful mock in Expo Go

Design decisions worth knowing:

• State-first: screens are dumb renderers of the zustand store. Balancing = editing numbers in gameStore.ts initial state and content.ts.
• Persistence partializes out notifs/overlay so you never rehydrate into a stale modal.
• Offline earnings are computed from lastSeen on foreground, capped at 8h.
• Go Indie opens the remotely configured RevenueCat Paywall only after a deliberate Go Indie tap from the approved-app affordance or Store. There is no launch paywall. The lifetime unlock doubles offline earnings only after the go_indie entitlement is known active; Restore Purchases is available in Store.
• RevenueCat uses the SDK's CURRENT offering without hardcoded product identifiers or prices. Dynamic require preserves graceful mock fallback when the native module or environment key is unavailable, and unavailable RevenueCat never blocks launch or base offline earnings.

Week 3: going live with RevenueCat

Remaining captain steps for a Test Store purchase:

1. Create a RevenueCat account and create a project for Ramen Profitable.
2. In Apps & Providers, create a Test Store app/provider for the project.
3. In Product Catalog, define the Test Store lifetime product and the go_indie_lifetime package, create the offering, connect the package to that offering, and create the go_indie entitlement with the product attached. Publish a Paywall/workflow on that same offering; the app reads the SDK's CURRENT offering and its remotely configured packages and prices. Confirm the published workflow assembles without a no-workflow error.
4. In Project Settings → API keys, copy the Test Store public SDK key. It must start with test_.
5. For local development, put the exact variable REVENUECAT_TEST_STORE_API_KEY=test_... in the untracked .env.local. For an EAS development build, add that same variable and value to the project's development environment with eas env:create --name REVENUECAT_TEST_STORE_API_KEY --value test_... --environment development --visibility plaintext, or add it in Project settings → Environment variables. The development profile already selects that environment.
6. Build the simulator development client with npx eas build --profile ios-simulator --platform ios, install it in the iOS Simulator, and start the bundler with npx expo start --dev-client. For a local native rebuild, use npx expo run:ios.

Captain path: physical iPhone development build

The captain must run eas login in a real terminal, then provision the development Test Store variable in the EAS development environment as described above. For Apple credentials, create an App Store Connect API key with the Admin role, keep its .p8 file outside this repository, and use the captain-provided key only through the EAS credential flow. Choose the Individual team type and provide the non-secret Key ID, Issuer ID, and Apple Team ID when EAS requests them. Do not commit or share the .p8 file or any credential values.

Run npx eas build --profile development --platform ios. In the EAS Website device-registration flow, open the registration page on the captain's iPhone, register that device, select it for the build, and install the resulting development build from its EAS build link. The device must launch the app and render it before physical-device validation is claimed. Keep Metro running with npx expo start --dev-client and report the device-side RevenueCat state plainly: [purchases] RevenueCat configured for test-store. means Test Store is configured; [purchases] ... mock mode. means the native module or key is unavailable and real purchases were not configured.

After dependency changes, run npm ci in the clone that actually runs Metro; otherwise Metro can fail with Unable to resolve module even when this clone is installed correctly. Do not claim RevenueCat configuration from app launch alone; use the Metro evidence above.

Apple Developer or App Store Connect approval is not required for RevenueCat Test Store purchases; the physical iPhone EAS build still requires the Apple credentials and device registration described above.

Release environments must instead provide the matching REVENUECAT_IOS_API_KEY or REVENUECAT_ANDROID_API_KEY. Expo config injects only Test Store keys into development builds and only validated platform keys into release builds; it never falls back from a release build to the Test Store variable.

Balancing cheatsheet

Knob	Where	Current
Tap power	initial.tapPower	3 LOC
Project size	newProject	250–500 LOC
Approval odds	resolveReview	72% (cat QA → 86%)
App MRR roll	resolveReview	$40–200 base
Win condition	MRR_GOAL	$2,000 MRR
Day length	slowTick	~30s real time