Built in Lahore. One engineer. No VC.
Game Night is an indie Android app by Asad Mahmood, a software engineer in Lahore, Pakistan. It's the second app in a series of small, honest, Android-first products under the AsadTechLead label.
Why a games hub?
The original problem: every car ride, every dinner table, every cousin-Zoom in our family started the same way — "wait, which app has the wheel?" Three apps for one game night is two too many. The first version of Game Night was a glorified dice roller. Then we added the wheel, then the bottle, then Ludo, then Truth or Dare, then four arcade games. Now there are nineteen.
What we won't ship
- A signup screen. You shouldn't have to sign up for an account to flip a coin. Every signup wall on a casual app is a confession that the app's business model is your data, not your enjoyment.
- A paywall on core gameplay. Whatever ships as "free" stays free. If we ever add a paid tier, it adds new things (premium dice cosmetics, custom themes) — it never removes what was already in the free version.
- Personalised ads. AdMob's child-directed treatment is enabled in the code. We get serving fees from generic ads; we don't get bonuses for shipping your profile to advertisers.
- Dark patterns. No fake urgency, no "you're losing your streak", no notification spam. The streak reminder fires at most once a day at 10 pm local, and you can turn it off in Settings.
The longer story
I built the first version because I wanted my niece (age 8) to be able to roll dice for a board game without me handing her a phone full of social apps. The Quick Settings tile was for that — a one-tap dice roll she could trigger without opening the app at all.
The Truth or Dare module came after a road trip to Murree where my cousins and I ran out of jokes by hour 3. The six prompt packs are categorised so adults can play Romantic safely, the Cousins pack covers desi family humour, and the Friendly pack stays kid-safe for the next car trip with the niece.
Ludo came in because the Pakistani Play Store treats Ludo King and Yalla Ludo as the canon — and both ask for a phone number on day one. A version that didn't ask for anything seemed worth building.
What's next
- iOS port, if Android numbers justify the $99/year Apple Developer fee.
- Ludo with team play (2v2) and Diwali / Eid seasonal boards (cosmetic only — no gameplay change).
- An offline-first Trivia mode in English + Urdu.
- More arcade mini-games — the engine is reused so each one is a couple of weekends.
Made in
Lahore, Pakistan. Designed for Pakistani families first, then for anyone who'd rather play with friends than scroll a feed. We use a US AWS region for the Supabase realtime channel because it's the cheapest free-tier option that still has acceptable latency for South Asia.
Contact
Email asadtechlead@gmail.com. Bugs, feature requests, hate mail, or photos of your family playing Ludo at 11 pm — all welcome. There's no automated triage system, so every email reaches a human.