Githam City
A pixel city where the hero's cape is for rent
What is Githam City?
Githam City is a small pixel-art city with one resident superhero, and he works full time. Fires break out across town, cats get stuck in trees, thieves make a run for it, and now and then a bug shows up in production. Each time, the hero takes off across the rooftops to sort it out. Visitors don't have to just watch: when an alert pops up, you can click it and send the hero there yourself. Every rescue ends up in the news ticker along the bottom of the screen, with headlines like "Cat rescued from a tree, reportedly unimpressed" or "Getaway ends in a mid-air tackle."
The city is drawn in the 16-bit style of the old console games. It uses a fixed 32-color palette, chunky sprites with dark outlines, and a CRT glow over everything. The whole thing runs live in the browser on WebGL. There's nothing to install and no sign-up, so you can open it and look around for as long as you like.
The hero is also open for business. His cape is for rent, 48 hours at a time. Your logo goes on the cape as he flies across the city, and on his chest in the portrait beside the map, with a link back to you. If you want something smaller, you can rent a line in the news ticker, such as "Shipping something cool · by @you," for anywhere from one day to two weeks. The ticker shows up to three lines at a time, mixed in with the hero's latest headlines.
Booking is self-serve. You pick dates in a calendar covering the next 30 days, pay by card through Stripe, and you're done. A cape slot costs $29 for 48 hours, and a ticker line costs $4.50 per day. Every booking is reviewed by hand before it goes live. If it isn't approved, you get your money back, minus card fees.
Githam City is a side project by an indie developer, built for developers, makers and small teams who want to be seen without running an ad campaign. Here, your brand is part of the city, not a banner beside it.
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FounderPlaybooks.
What other founders did to grow.
2722 dispatches from hundreds of founders, pulled from the week's best podcasts.
You want to think about distribution on day zero before you even launch. And there's always a creator in your niche. If there isn't, the great thing about solving for a problem that you yourself encounter is that you can create the content. You know exactly why you're building this product.
Plan Distribution Day Zero By Finding A Niche Creator Or Becoming One Yourself
Pre treats distribution as a pre-launch problem, not a post-launch one. Because he builds for problems he personally has, he can authentically create content in the niche if no existing creator covers it — which both attracts an audience and validates the product narrative before launch day.
Every time a new app enters the market the whole market grows... this tells me there are users that the market leader has not tapped into yet that if a new entrant comes in and has a different value proposition or branding or appeal, they can actually capture those users.
New entrants growing the category is a buy signal — every screen-time launch grew the pie
Josh ran a Sensor Tower cross-section on screen-time apps and found each new entrant expanded total downloads and revenue rather than stealing share from Opal. That stacking pattern is a buy signal: the category leader hasn't saturated demand, and a fresh angle can unlock untapped users. 'A leader exists' isn't a reason to skip a young niche.
There's a play for whatever you're stuck on.
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