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Shalom Rayhamen (26) built Lagos Life in less than 24 hours. On October 1, 2026, she slept as a regular software engineer and woke up an internet sensation.

But this is not her first rodeo in the software engineering scene, and it certainly isn’t her first success. From coding in unfavourable conditions in Abia state, to earning enough notoriety to receive the UK Global Talent Visa, and now building a game that will retire her, here’s how Shalom Rayhamen built her software engineering career, and how you can do it too.

This is Shalom’s story, as told to Azara.

“It’s trending!”

“What’s trending?” My husband asked on the phone.

“My game.”

In confusion, he sputtered, “You made a game?”

He didn’t realise that I had just spent the last 8 hours coding something that would change our lives forever.

And honestly? Neither did I. All I know is I started building a game for fun on a Wednesday night, and when I woke up the next day, it was the most trending thing in Nigeria. That game is Lagos Life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me go back to how I got here.

I grew up in Port Harcourt. My dad provided for us comfortably, but at some point, he couldn’t. I remember how that affected school fee payments and even my exams. It was so bad that, for one year, my brother and I took turns going to school because my parents couldn’t afford it for both of us.

But even when I was young, I wanted to create, and that desire led me to coding. In 2018, at the age of 18, I got a six-month internship to learn to code in Abia, where my mum lives. My laptop, a Chromebook, was a birthday gift from my mum and wasn’t ideal for coding. That, mixed with light issues and network delays, initially made coding hell.

But I was determined to be a software engineer. When the internship ended, I continued teaching myself. I spent a lot of time at tech hubs in Abba, mostly for the free Wi-Fi and light.

My first real gig came in 2020, during COVID. A startup was building a medical booking app, and I built the front end. They paid me ₦60k. I remember looking at that money and understanding my skill was actually monetisable. It was a giddy feeling.

That money got me my next laptop, the kind of bulky device that made noise the second you opened it. I was ashamed to use it in the hubs, knowing that people would laugh. But still, I kept going.

And then, in 2021, a stranger on Facebook changed my life.

I post a lot about my work on Facebook, and I teach kids to code. A Malaysian on Facebook found me through one of these posts and said his boss wanted to talk to me. We jumped on a WhatsApp call, and by the end of it, they had offered me a $1,000 (₦1.3m) a month remote job.

I couldn’t comprehend that amount of money. I couldn’t even negotiate the offer. My answer was an immediate yes.

Then, in 2023, my journey as a software engineer earned me a Global Talent Visa to the UK. That came as another pleasant surprise.

Software engineering has given me so much, but it was Lagos Life that changed my life forever.

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Up until last week, game development was something I’d dabbled in as a hobby. Most of the things I made were just for playing with friends, and I never thought of commercialising my games. I liked The Sims franchise growing up, but I felt it wasn’t localised enough, and the characters were a little dumb. If I were going to make a game, it would be a Nigerian version of that. But, as I said, I wasn’t seriously considering doing it.

However, on that faithful Wednesday night, I saw that someone had made a Danfo driving game that was trending on Twitter. Many people were talking about it and spinning up their own versions. Those spin-off creators kept claiming something that stuck with me: “I had the idea first.”

Was that going to be me? A woman who had an idea like The Sims but waited until someone else did it first?

Inspired, I told my husband I wanted to start programming a game, but he said I should just focus on Eliy, my current AI project. Then, he slept.

But I didn’t sleep, nor did I take his advice. I coded.

Every time I looked at the clock, I told myself I’d go to bed soon, but I kept adding features and fixing issues as they cropped up.

I finished Lagos Life at about 5 a.m. on October 1, tweeted the link at 7 a.m., slept off, and by the time I woke up at 10 a.m., the game was trending on Twitter. It already had over 10k plays. I hadn’t expected my game to go far, but it was at that moment that I knew it was going to be huge.

So here I am, less than a week later, with over 1 million players, and on the path to building a billion-dollar company.

Currently, I’ve earned over $46k, a figure I only disclosed after someone on Twitter pitched buying Lagos Life for $100k. I found it hilarious that he valued my company so lowly. How can I sell a business that is projected to earn $50m before December? That I know will be a billion-dollar venture very soon?

I say a billion-dollar company with full confidence because Lagos Life is the most profitable thing I’ve ever done. I started by selling in-game money that can be bought with real money. I put three bundles there: ₦500, ₦1,000, and ₦2,000 each. I didn’t think anything of it, but in my first three days, I earned about ₦150k to ₦200k from people who bought them. It would end there, but people demanded I add higher bundles, so we now have ₦10,000 and ₦20,000 packages that people buy every day.

The funniest part is that those top-up bundles are the least profitable things. I also promote real people’s music in the virtual clubs like Quilox. But my most profitable venture has been the virtual billboards.

About two days into the game’s launch, companies started reaching out to me, saying they wanted to promote their businesses in-game. I got so many offers that billboard space ran out, and I had to scale up my game to accommodate more ads.

It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Upscaling this fast has been hard, especially as I’m still the only coder on the game. There was a time when too many people had too much in-game money, and the game began lagging, so I had to rush in and fix it.

I also had a situation where I accidentally wiped out everyone’s money. I made a feature that let the EFCC catch criminals, but a scripting error wiped out everyone’s funds. People were pissed, even insulting me on Twitter, but that’s okay. I understand they reacted so strongly because Lagos Life is an escape, and for a moment, I had messed with that.

And yet, the wins have been life-changing. Right before I made Lagos Life, I was contemplating giving up on making my own projects. None of them seemed to do very well for very long, and even my husband agreed.

I thought it would be better if I just focused on simply being an employee and getting promotions. But now, with the revenue from my game, I will quit my job and work on Lagos Life, along with other personal projects, full-time. People have said this is the game that is going to retire me, and with each passing day, I believe them more and more.

There are so many more developments I wish I could talk about, like my game expanding to other African countries, but I’m keeping them under wraps until it’s time. In a few weeks, I’ll be making some major announcements. But right now, I can say with full confidence that Lagos Life isn’t dying out anytime soon.

Shalom’s Career Advice:

Start small. It’s cliché, but it works. So many software engineers think they need the best devices to begin coding, but I didn’t even have a MacBook when I started earning in dollars.

Be consistent. If I had let Nigeria’s struggles get to me, I would never have earned a Global Talent Visa or reached the stage I am at today. Software engineering isn’t an overnight success scheme. It takes years of dedication.

Branch out. Imagine if I had never tried game development? Lagos Life would have never happened. Try different types of software engineering, even as hobbies.

Strive for excellence. A lot of my jobs came from recommendations, and that happened because my previous work spoke for itself.

Shalom’s Resources:

For learning, I did an internship that really helped. To further teach myself, I used Udemy and FreeCodeCamp and visited local tech hubs to learn and access resources.

There are so many people who inspired me, but I’ll recommend Samson Goddy, HackSultan (Sultan Akintunde), and Adora Nwodo.

For devices: A capable, affordable laptop. HP, Dell, and Lenovo as alternatives to a MacBook. If you have a laptop, you don’t even need a phone.

When making games, focus on character creation and 3D game assets. I specifically like Three.js. You must research suitable 3D packages and pay attention to the characters and game world.

Finally, I’m pro-AI. You don’t need it to help you make things from scratch, but AI is good at bettering what you already have. If you have talent, AI can take you far, so don’t shy away from it.