Happy Sunday Techtopians.
Meet Eden, a former Slack staff engineer who took the entrepreneurial leap to co-found Flying Comet Games, a studio reimagining casual gaming for digital publications. Drawing inspiration from the massive success of Wordle, Eden and his team craft "guilt-free" games designed to become part of readers' daily routines, specifically targeting intelligent non-gamers who seek meaningful ways to unwind. As CTO, he's on a mission to fill the gap between mindless scrolling and the New York Times Games phenomenon, creating engaging experiences that make players feel good about their daily gaming habits.

Over to Eden!

From Slack Engineer to Game Studio Founder: Building Daily Games for the 'Non-Gamer' Market

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your business or product?

I’m the co-founder and CTO of Flying Comet Games. We make feel-good games for digital publications. These games boost engagement and retention with games that become part of our customers’ readers’ daily routines.

I quit my job as a staff software engineer at Slack about a year ago and have gone all in on entrepreneurship with my friend since then.

What was your main inspiration for getting into it?

I think this genre of games for “non-gamers” is barely touching the surface. In my opinion NYT Games (namely Wordle) has legitimized this concept. You see people playing games who don’t consider themselves gamers, even people who have never played games before. Our goal is to be the best at making guilt free games for smart people.

How do you define success in your niche?

Make games people keep coming back to that make them feel good.

If you were to start again from scratch, what would you do differently?

I think too early we chased numbers, metrics, etc. If you want to be in the startup game for the long haul you need to pick something you genuinely care about. Yes, boring businesses are profitable and easier to build but where’s the joy in that?

What advice would you give to someone just starting out with a similar product or niche?

Build and iterate as fast as possible. Good games take time but try and experiment with different designs and core mechanics as early as possible.

What was the most challenging aspect of Building in Public or Indie Hacking?

There’s too much advice and criticism out there from people who aren’t experts. Choose who you take advice from wisely.

What problem are you solving that most people don't see or understand?

Intelligent non-gamers who want daily playables are underserved. As an alternative they kill time via apps that make them feel guilty using (Twitter, TikTok, etc). Outside of NYT Games the closest they have are maybe something like Duolingo where they don’t really care about learning a language but want to do something fun that makes them feel smarter.

Smart people want guilt free ways to turn down, kill time and have fun.

Share a moment when you almost gave up, and what kept you going?

I’m quite stubborn and optimistic so luckily I haven’t reached a point where I almost gave up yet. It also helps having an incredible co-founder to work with every day.

How has building this product changed you as a person or a professional?

While I was confident as a product engineer before starting my own business it’s really opened my eyes to how difficult it is to make thing people genuinely want to use every day.

Where can people find you?

FlyingCometGames.com  // https://x.com/EntreEden