• Nigerian architect and game developer Odaro Eguavoen built The Lonely Architect as a solo project under Ekosodi Games.
• The 2D platformer uses architectural sketches, puzzles and surreal spaces to explore overwork, isolation and identity.
• The game is available on itch.io as a name-your-own-price Windows download after appearing at Lagos Games Week and the Afro Game Showcase.
There is a point in a hard week when work stops being something you do and starts becoming the room you are trapped inside. Nigerian architect and game developer Odaro Eguavoen has turned that feeling into a game.
In The Lonely Architect, the player enters the mind of an overworked architect after he falls asleep. Buildings, arches, boxes and drawn lines stop behaving like ordinary design tools. They become a strange world of obstacles, platforms and puzzles, while the main character tries to make sense of the version of himself that work has taken over.
A game built from an architect’s eye
Eguavoen made the game under the name Ekosodi Games. The project is a 2D atmospheric platformer, but its most interesting feature is the way it turns architectural language into play. The official itch.io page describes a world shaped by eerie spaces, desolate landscapes and the subconscious of an isolated architect.
The game has a Story Mode told across four acts — Emptiness, Heaviness, Who Am I? and Where is Home? — as well as a Build Mode where players use blocks to create structures and illustrations. That is a neat twist: the same tools that can make a person feel boxed in are also tools for making something new.
A recent Games Industry Africa profile notes that Eguavoen’s visual inspiration comes from the pen drawings architects traditionally use to explain a plan. Here, those lines become the physical rules of the game.
When burnout becomes the plot
Nigerian games do not have to be loud to feel close to home. Sometimes the familiar thing is not a landmark or a slang word. It is the feeling of having too much on your plate, working alone and wondering whether the thing you love is beginning to swallow the rest of your life.
The Lonely Architect does not treat that feeling as a lecture. It gives it a place to live. A statue of the main character can become part of the level. A room can look like a sketch, then turn into a maze. The game’s premise allows its puzzles and spaces to carry part of the emotional story.
That is why a project like this matters in the Nigerian gaming conversation. It is easy to talk about games only through tournaments, betting, big studios or the global titles people play on their phones. But local developers also get to decide what a game can be about. It can be an adventure, a football match, a piece of history or a very personal reflection on work and loneliness.
The solo-developer reality
Making a game alone is rarely romantic. One person has to handle the design, art direction, systems, testing, feedback and the difficult work of telling people that the game exists. Eguavoen’s project began as a demo and became a Top 25 finalist in the Safe In Our World 2024 Game Jam before being developed further.
It has since appeared at Lagos Games Week and the Afro Game Showcase. The current version is a Windows download on itch.io, where players can choose their price. That makes it accessible, but it also puts the game in the difficult space many independent projects know well: people can discover it, but discovery is not the same thing as being paid for the work.
Still, there is something useful in the project’s existence. It shows a Nigerian developer taking a private pressure point and giving it a world, a mood and a set of rules that other people can enter.
The best games are not always the ones that let you escape real life. Sometimes they are the ones that give real life a new shape, then let you find a way through it.
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Which Nigerian story, feeling or everyday pressure would you love to see turned into a game? Tell us in the comments.
