Every card in my new game is based on a real job rejection I got. Here is my job hunting game. The Unhired
About a year ago I was job hunting and started noticing a pattern the whole process was so absurd that every rejection email, every group interview where the CEO's nephew somehow won(yes In interview, I saw him :D), every "we'd love to see how you'd fit our culture" moment felt like a card in some terrible game.
So I made it one.
The Unhired is a Reigns-like satire about Gen-Z job hunting. Just launched on the App Store today.
How it works:
- Swipe right to accept, left to reject (classic Reigns)
- 4 stats to keep alive: dreams, money, social pressure, mental health
- Push any one too far and the run ends
- 5 playable characters, 21 achievements (all tragic), 8 localizations
- Every card is loosely based on something I or someone I know actually went through
A few examples that hit close to home:
- The "unpaid internship for experience" pitch
- The 12-candidate group interview with a pre-decided winner
- The salary negotiation that opens with "our budget is tight but the potential is unlimited"
- Mom at dinner: "so what do you actually do for work these days?"
Built solo in SwiftUI (iOS 17+, Observation framework). The trailer capture pipeline was its own adventure XCUITest, simctl recordVideo, and a Python+Pillow text overlay setup because ffmpeg's drawtext was missing libfreetype on my machine. Happy to nerd out about any of it if anyone's curious.
It's free with a paywall after level 1, but the core loop is fully playable without paying anything.
Would genuinely love feedback especially the kind that hurts. And if you've got an absurd job hunting story, drop it in the comments; I'm actively adding cards based on community submissions.
App Store Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-unhired/id6761137529