I ran every game out of 30 browser tabs, so I built the companion app I wanted

Every game I got into ended the same way. A wiki tab. A map tab. A build guide. A spreadsheet for crafting costs. A Notion page for goals I would forget by the next session. A YouTube tab paused on some boss fight. By the time I actually alt-tabbed back into the game, I had lost my train of thought and half my notes lived somewhere I would never find again.

I kept thinking someone should build a proper companion for this. Not a wiki, not a note app I bend into the wrong shape, but a real workspace that belongs to the game I am playing. Nobody did. So I did.

It is called Gamepan, it launches on Steam on August 17, and this is the honest version of how it came together and the decisions I would happily argue about in the comments.

The core idea: one workspace per game

The thing I could not get out of my head was that every game needs a slightly different set of tools, but the tools themselves repeat. An MMO needs checklists and timers and a map. A soulslike needs build notes and a boss tracker. A survival game needs crafting math and an inventory. Tabletop needs character sheets and session logs. The nouns change, the shapes do not.

So Gamepan is built around one idea: you give each game its own workspace, and you fill it from a library of drag-and-drop modules. There are more than 20 of them now: notes, checklists, kanban boards, tables, maps with pins, skill trees, calculators, timers, calendars, galleries, collection trackers, dice, and so on. You drop what you need onto a free-form canvas, arrange it how your brain works, and that layout is the game. Open the game, the workspace is right there. No hunting.

That framing did more for the product than any single feature. It turned "an app with a lot of features" into "a space you make yours," and it gave me a clean rule for saying no. If something did not fit as a module on a per-game canvas, it did not belong.

Decision one: local-first, no accounts, no tracking

Here is the first thing I expect pushback on. Gamepan has no account system and no telemetry. Everything you make lives on your machine as plain files you own. You can export a workspace, back it up, or wipe it whenever you want. The only thing that ever leaves your PC is optional Steam Cloud sync, and only if you turn it on.

The conventional startup wisdom says the opposite. Make it a web app, put everything in your database, capture emails, track every click, build the funnel. I understand why that is the default. It is also exactly the thing I did not want as a user. My game notes are mine. They should work offline, on a plane, on a Steam Deck with spotty wifi, without a login screen standing between me and my own checklist.

Going local-first cost me things. No easy analytics dashboard telling me what people use. No server-side feature flags. Sharing had to be solved a harder way (more on that below). But it also gave the product a spine and a promise I can actually keep, and "your data stays on your PC" turns out to be a real reason people trust a small indie tool.

Decision two: one-time purchase, not a subscription

Second thing I will defend. Gamepan is a one-time purchase of 14.99. No subscription, no ads, no upsell. Buy it once and it is yours.

Every incentive in software right now points toward recurring revenue, and I get the math. Predictable MRR, higher lifetime value, investors like the graph. But I was building a tool people keep open next to a game they already paid 60 dollars for. Charging them rent every month to look at their own checklists felt wrong, and it felt like the exact reason people are tired of software.

Selling on Steam made this easier to commit to. Steam handles payments, refunds, tax, and regional pricing as the merchant of record, and it puts me in front of the exact people who would want this. The tradeoff is Steam's cut and Steam's rules, but for a solo developer the alternative is running my own checkout, chargebacks, and VAT compliance, and I would rather spend that time on the app. I am keeping the door open for a direct download later for people who prefer it, but Steam is home for launch.

The features I did not expect to matter

A few things started as nice-to-haves and became the parts I am proudest of.

An in-game overlay that floats on top of the action, and can open a game's workspace automatically when the game launches. This is the difference between a tool you remember to use and one you actually use.

View-only LAN sharing. Because there is no server, I built it as a tiny local server on your own network. Point your phone or tablet at it and you can mirror any module to the couch, read-only, without anything touching the internet. It is off by default. For tabletop nights this alone sold a few people.

Boring reliability work. Saves are written to survive a crash mid-write, and there is an automatic version history of your whole library so a bad afternoon is recoverable. Nobody buys software for this, but everybody quietly leaves when they lose their data.

What building solo actually taught me

Scope was the whole battle. A modular app is a trap, because every module is a tiny product with its own edge cases, its own settings, its own empty states. I recently did a full pass just adding per-module settings so the app feels finished instead of feeling like a pile of demos. The unglamorous polish is most of the work, and it is invisible until it is missing.

Marketing as a developer is uncomfortable and unavoidable. I built a real site at gamepan.io, wired up proper SEO because "game companion app" is a search people actually make, and I am doing the rounds on Product Hunt, communities, and yes, posts like this one. None of it feels natural. All of it is the job.

Picking a launch date changed everything. Steam gave me August 17. The moment there was a real date, I stopped polishing forever and started cutting. A deadline is the best feature-prioritizer I have ever used.

The ask

Gamepan launches on Steam on August 17, 2026, on Windows, Linux, and Steam Deck, with macOS planned after. If any of this resonates, the single most useful thing you can do is wishlist it, because Steam notifies wishlisters the moment it goes live and the wishlist count is what gets a small game seen at all.

Site: https://www.gamepan.io
Store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5002240/Gamepan/

I would genuinely like to hear where you land on the two calls I made. Local-first with no accounts, and one-time pricing instead of a subscription. Smart, or leaving money and data on the table? Tell me I am wrong.