Lagos Life is part of a wave of Nigerian-made browser games sparked by Lagos Run, Opeyemi Adeniran’s game about driving a danfo, the iconic yellow bus, through Lagos, which drew more than 140,000 players in its first week. Rayhamen built Lagos Life days after seeing Lagos Run on X, and copycats soon followed.
The developers are building fast with AI, and the games spread through links shared on social media. In a fortnight, the shift shows that a game made by Nigerians, about Nigeria, can reach a mass audience almost immediately.
Lagos Life hit 10 million users on Thursday evening, with users from 15 countries. More than 100,000 were playing on Thursday evening, Rayhamen said, and the game has peaked at more than 200,000 players at once. After Nigeria, most users come from the US, UK, Ghana, Canada and the Netherlands, she added.
Vatar Inc., the company behind the viral Nigerian browser game Lagos Life, has gone ahead to close a $500,000 angel round at a $10 million valuation three days after incorporation, according to a company statement.
“We built something people love that is growing very fast, so a lot of investors wanted to be involved,” Shalom Rayhamen, co-founder and CEO of Vatar Inc., told TechCabal in an interview. “We got the opportunity to connect and hear their offers, and because we are growing so fast, we closed it quickly so we could focus on the product.”
Olugbenga “GB” Agboola, Flutterwave’s CEO, invested through his fund, Resilience17. Oo Nwoye, Nathan Nwachuku, Terra Industries CEO, and Abdulhamid Hassan, Mono’s CEO, also participated in the round, which the company says closed in a day.
“Just signing up, setting up your character. That makes you registered,” Rayhamen said.
Rayhamen co-founded Vatar Inc. with Owen Rayhamen, the chief product officer, and Anderson Oriahi, the chief business development officer, on October 6. The funding will go to product, marketing, and hiring.
“We can still reach more people,” she said, adding that four million players is still a small share of Nigeria’s population.
How the game works
Lagos Life is a free life-simulation game that runs in a web browser. Players create a character, get a job, earn virtual naira, pay rent, and meet other players in a shared city. They buy generators to deal with power cuts, ride danfo buses, and live under a virtual governor and commissioners. Players pick who holds office, Rayhamen said, because a world where people earn money needs people in charge.
The in-game clock runs on real Lagos time. Real locations such as the Quilox nightclub and the Amala Shitta food spot appear in the city so players recognise them.
“It’s intentional,” Rayhamen said.
Each new player starts as either “Nepo,” with money and connections, or “Lapo,” a reference to microfinance loans and a hard start. Rayhamen said players asked for the feature. Some now say it promotes classism, which she said “wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“You release features, and some people will say ‘yay’ and some people say ‘nah’,” she said.
She expected players to want to socialise, but was surprised by how much. Recent requests include cooking, starting a family and sending children to school. “It’s almost blurring the line between the physical and the simulation,” she said.
The game’s virality and users’ ability to message each other have raised questions around content moderation and user protection. Rayhamen said Vatar has added an age check and tools to help users protect themselves.
“We screen and censor messages,” she said. “We have put mechanisms in place to keep users safe. Users can report other users, and they can block anyone they do not want to talk to.”
How it makes money
Selling games to Nigerians has long been hard. Credit card penetration in Nigeria is about 3.5%, making paid downloads and in-app purchases hard. Lagos Life is free to play and has charged brands since it launched.
Businesses rent billboards and plots inside the virtual city, while musicians pay to have their songs played in its clubs. Chowdeck, a food delivery company, appears as an app on every character’s phone and has partnered with Vatar Inc.
Rayhamen told TechCabal the game currently has five revenue streams, including advertising, music promotion, company deals, and football streaming. Players can also pay real money to top up their in-game cash.
“People want to have like an edge in games,” she said.
Vatar says it has earned and contracted more than $170,000 since launch. That is up from about $46,900 in its first four days, a figure Rayhamen posted on X. Payments run through Flutterwave, she said.
“This is actually a business,” she said, adding that “the infrastructure is expensive.” She declined to say how much the game costs to run and did not say whether Vatar is profitable.
What’s next
Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil hub in the Niger Delta, went live in the game around October 6, Rayhamen said. She declined to name the countries or cities Vatar plans to feature next. “I want people to anticipate,” she said.
Copycats have already appeared, including PH Lifestyle, a Port Harcourt Life game, and London Red Bus, a version of Lagos Run. Rayhamen said developers with AI tools should build something original.
“I feel like that is not creativity,” she said. “You have that opportunity, and all you can do is copy.”
Rayhamen said the moment Lagos Life stops feeling new will help Vatar, because the team can then build features players have not asked for. “When they get used to it, then we blow their minds,” she said.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>🚨 10 MILLION PLAYERS. IN 11 DAYS!!! 😭🇳🇬👑
LAGOS LIFE JUST CROSSED 10,150, 224 PLAYERS!
2.3 MILLION active today.
49.2 MILLION visits and counting.
You took our little Lagos and made it the world’s business 😭❤️
MAKE SOME NOISE!!! 🗣️🔥
10M DOWN. WHO’S READY FOR 100M? 🚀 https://t.co/pc5NXRwKBC</p>— Shalom Rayhamen (@Shalom_HeyEliy) <a href=”https://x.com/Shalom_HeyEliy/status/2109285433934856667?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw“>October 11, 2026</a></blockquote>
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Lagos Life, the Nigerian browser game that has attracted millions of players since its October 1 launch, is preparing to open its platform to other developers after creator Shalom Rayhamen announced the game has crossed 10 million players in 10 days.
Rayhamen announced the milestone on X, saying the game had recorded more than 1.4 million active players the previous day and over 36.5 million visits since its launch.
The latest figures build on the game’s rapid early growth. Lagos Life crossed one million players within its first three days, drawing attention for its virtual take on everyday life in Lagos.
Players create characters, find jobs, earn virtual money, rent homes, and interact with others in a shared digital city. Its familiar setting and social features have helped it spread quickly online.
But Rayhamen’s latest announcement points to a bigger ambition than growing the audience for one game.
Lagos Life wants other developers to build inside it
Rayhamen says the team will release application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow developers to bring their games into Lagos Life.
APIs are tools that let different software systems communicate. In this case, they could allow developers to connect their games to Lagos Life rather than building an entirely separate audience and account system from scratch.
According to Rayhamen, players will be able to join these games with their existing Lagos Life accounts and spend their in-game money within them.
If implemented as described, the plan could turn Lagos Life from a standalone life-simulation game into a platform for independent developers to build additional experiences for its existing audience.
The announcement did not specify when the APIs would become available, what technical requirements developers would need to meet, or how payments and revenue-sharing would work.
Those details will matter. Opening a platform to third-party developers requires tools that are easy to use, clear rules, and a reliable way to manage accounts and in-game transactions.
The Sims-style game recently raised $500,000 in a seed funding round, valuing the company at $10m. This new API integration could potentially push up the valuation of the company she incorporated only five days ago.
For Lagos Life, the next test is whether its enormous early audience will support a broader ecosystem of games. Seven million players give the platform a significant head start. The APIs could help it put that audience to work for developers, but their eventual adoption will determine whether the idea grows beyond the initial viral success.
