Shalom Rayhamen: The Developer Who Turned Her Idea of a Nigerian Sims Into Lagos Life

On October 1, 2026, Nigerian software developer Shalom Rayhamen released a game she had spent the previous night building. By the time she woke up a few hours later, Lagos Life was trending on X and had recorded more than 10,000 plays.

Within days, it had crossed one million players. By October 8, BusinessDay reported that the game had surpassed four million players. Less than two weeks after launch, reports announced a $500,000 angel funding round for Vatar, the company behind the game, at a reported $10 million valuation.

What began as a personal experiment had quickly become a business attracting players, brands and investors.

But Lagos Life is not simply a story about a game that went viral. It is the result of years of software development, an idea Rayhamen had carried for a long time, and a decision to build a product around a world millions of Nigerians already understood.

Before the Game, There Was a Developer

Rayhamen’s career began long before Lagos Life entered the conversation.

In 2018, at 18, she started a six month coding internship in Abia State. Learning to code was not straightforward. She worked with a Chromebook that was not ideal for software development and dealt with unreliable electricity and internet access.

When the internship ended, she continued teaching herself. She spent time at local technology hubs, partly to access electricity and Wi-Fi, while developing the skills she needed to become a professional software engineer.

Her first paid software project came in 2020, when she built the front end of a medical booking application for a startup. The project earned her ₦60,000 and gave her an early demonstration that her technical skills could become a source of income.

In 2021, a connection made through Facebook led to a remote software engineering opportunity paying $1,000 a month. Two years later, her professional journey earned her a UK Global Talent visa.

Over time, Rayhamen also built products of her own. Before Lagos Life, she was working on HeyEliy, an AI focused platform designed to help business owners create digital products for their businesses.

These experiences established something important; she already knew how to build software and had experience thinking beyond individual coding projects. Lagos Life would become another expression of that experience, this time through consumer entertainment.

In her October 7 interview with Zikoko, Rayhamen described software engineering as a journey that had taken years of persistence. Lagos Life may have arrived overnight, but the skills behind it did not.

An Idea Inspired by The Sims

The concept behind Lagos Life began with a game Rayhamen had loved since childhood: The Sims 3.

The life simulation game allows players to create characters, manage their lives and interact with a virtual environment. Rayhamen enjoyed the experience but wanted something that felt closer to her own world.

What would a life simulation game look like if its characters lived in Nigeria? What if the environment, humour, social interactions and everyday experiences reflected the realities people encountered around them?

She had considered this idea for years, but game development remained a hobby rather than a business priority.

The turning point came when she saw the attention surrounding Lagos Run, a Nigerian game that lets players drive a danfo through Lagos. Its popularity encouraged her to stop waiting and begin building her own idea.

Rayhamen was already working on HeyEliy, and her husband initially encouraged her to focus on that project instead. But the idea had become difficult to ignore.

She started coding that Wednesday night.

The distinction between inspiration and execution is central to this story. The life simulation concept already existed, and Nigerian themed gaming was not an entirely new idea. Rayhamen’s opportunity was to bring those elements together in a product shaped by her own vision of how a Nigerian virtual world should work.

Eight Hours of Building

According to interviews published by Zikoko and PINCHED, Rayhamen worked from around 9 p.m. until approximately 5 a.m. on October 1.

She added features, corrected issues and worked through the practical challenges of getting the game ready. One particularly stubborn problem involved the character animations: she struggled to get the avatars to sit correctly.

She eventually fixed the issue and completed the first version.

At around 7 a.m., she shared the game on X and went back to sleep. By approximately 10 a.m., the game was trending and had already recorded more than 10,000 plays.

The speed of development was remarkable, but the result was not produced by technical ability alone. Rayhamen had a clear idea of what she wanted to build, experience creating software and the willingness to keep working through the problems that emerged.

She also made the decision to release the product rather than keep the idea on her list of things to do.

That decision allowed the audience to respond to an actual experience, not just a concept.

Making Lagos Feel Like Lagos

The strongest part of Lagos Life is its cultural identity.

Players can create characters, pursue virtual jobs, earn and spend money, acquire property and socialise with other players. But the game is distinguished by the environment in which those activities happen.

Its world draws on recognisable Lagos locations, street culture, nightlife and the everyday realities of getting ahead in Nigeria. Players encounter references that make sense within their own social and cultural context.

Rayhamen told PINCHED that culture was something she deliberately considered when building the game. Details such as roadside vendors and familiar street encounters help make the virtual environment feel connected to the real city.

The game also incorporates familiar conversations about economic inequality through its starting profiles, including the contrasting ideas of “Nepo” privilege and the “Lapo” experience of starting with limited resources.

These choices turn the realities of Nigerian life into gameplay.

The appeal is not necessarily that the virtual city offers a perfect version of Lagos. It is that players recognise the world. They understand the jokes, the social dynamics and the ambition behind trying to earn more, acquire better things and move into a different class of lifestyle.

In other words, Lagos Life does not have to explain its cultural references to its intended audience. Many players arrive already understanding them.

That familiarity gives people something to talk about and share. It also makes the experience feel distinct from a life simulation game built around a setting that is less familiar to them.

Rayhamen took a genre she knew and adapted it around an audience she understood. The result was a product with a clear identity.

Why People Kept Talking About It

Cultural relevance was one part of the appeal. Accessibility and social interaction helped the game travel.

Lagos Life runs in a browser, allowing players to enter the virtual world through a link rather than first having to download a dedicated application. Within the game, players can encounter other people and interact in the same digital environment.

That shared experience creates opportunities for players to compare their progress, explore locations together and discuss what happens in the game outside it.

The result is a product that can become part of online conversation. Players do not simply experience the game privately; they can share their experiences with friends and wider online communities.

According to PINCHED’s October 6 interview, Rayhamen said the game had grown without a paid marketing campaign. Word of mouth, online conversations and celebrities playing and sharing the experience helped bring new people into the virtual city.

Its early growth suggests that a product does not always need a large advertising budget to attract attention. A recognisable concept, an accessible experience and an audience willing to share it can become powerful distribution channels.

That does not guarantee long term success, but it helps explain why Lagos Life moved so quickly from a link posted online to a widely discussed Nigerian gaming product.

From Viral Game to Commercial Business

The attention around Lagos Life also created a commercial opportunity.

Rayhamen introduced paid bundles of virtual currency, initially priced at ₦500, ₦1,000 and ₦2,000. She told Zikoko that these purchases generated approximately ₦150,000 to ₦200,000 during the first three days.

But player spending was only one potential revenue stream. Businesses began approaching her to advertise inside the game, creating demand for virtual billboards. She also explored opportunities to promote music through virtual clubs.

This transformed Lagos Life from an entertainment experiment into a digital environment with potential value for advertisers and other businesses trying to reach its audience.

The business model is worth paying attention to. A game rooted in local culture can create more than entertainment: it can become a place where people spend time, brands seek attention and commercial partnerships develop around a shared audience.

The next challenge is building a business that can sustain those opportunities while keeping the experience engaging for players.

That challenge has become more significant as the company has grown. BusinessDay reported on October 8 that Lagos Life had crossed four million players. On October 12, it reported that Vatar had raised $500,000 in angel funding at a reported $10 million valuation.

The funding marks an important development in the story. Lagos Life is no longer just a viral project built by an individual developer; it is becoming part of a company with the opportunity to invest in its technology, products and expansion.

The reported valuation and funding figures, however, should be understood as reported business milestones, not proof that the company has already achieved long-term profitability.

Building Beyond Lagos

The growth of Lagos Life has also encouraged Rayhamen to think beyond a single city.

By October 6, AbujaLife and PHLife had launched, extending the concept to Abuja and Port Harcourt. The games were designed to connect through virtual airports, allowing players to move between cities within the wider experience.

The expansion reflects a broader ambition: creating virtual worlds shaped by the character of different places rather than treating Nigeria as one generic setting.

That approach presents both an opportunity and a challenge. Each city has its own culture, references and identity. Reproducing that variety requires more than changing a location’s name; it requires understanding what makes each environment recognisable to the people who know it.

For Rayhamen, the early response to Lagos Life provides a reason to explore that possibility. It does not guarantee that every new city or game will attract the same audience, but it gives the company a starting point for testing the concept across different markets.

It also shows how one successful product can become the foundation for a broader digital entertainment business.

What Lagos Life Tells Us About Building Technology in Nigeria

Rayhamen’s journey offers a useful lesson for developers and entrepreneurs: innovation does not always mean inventing an entirely new category.

Sometimes, the opportunity lies in taking an established concept and making it more relevant to a specific audience.

Lagos Life builds on the life simulation genre, but its cultural details, social experience and setting give it a distinctive identity. Rayhamen’s technical experience made the product possible, while her understanding of the intended audience helped determine what the product should feel like.

The game’s early growth also demonstrates the value of launching an idea and allowing people to respond to it. Instead of keeping the concept private, Rayhamen put a working version into the world and discovered how people would use it.

The attention that followed created opportunities she could not have fully predicted: a growing audience, advertising interest, expansion into other cities and investment in the company behind the game.

There is still work ahead. A viral launch is not the same as a sustainable business. Maintaining performance, balancing the in-game economy, developing new features and retaining players will require continued investment and careful execution.

But Lagos Life has already shown that a Nigerian developer can turn a culturally specific idea into a product with substantial reach.

The Story Is Bigger Than One Night

It is tempting to describe Lagos Life as a game built in eight hours. That is true of its initial development, but it does not tell the whole story.

Behind those hours were years spent learning to code, taking software jobs, building products and developing the confidence to pursue an idea that had remained on the sidelines.

Rayhamen did not invent life simulation games, and she did not need to. She recognised an opportunity to make the experience feel closer to home, then built a product that allowed people to participate in that world.

Its early success shows how cultural familiarity can become a product advantage when it is supported by accessible technology, social interaction and a clear understanding of the audience.

The next chapter will depend on whether Vatar can turn that initial attention into a lasting business. But the first chapter has already made one thing clear: a product inspired by everyday Nigerian life can travel far when people see something of themselves in it.

For Shalom Rayhamen, the idea that once lived in her imagination is now a virtual world millions of people have entered.

And Lagos, in her hands, has become more than a city to navigate. It has become a game to play, a culture to explore and a business to build.