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Lagos Life Game Guide for Beginners: Your First Session

New to Lagos Life? This is your first session in order, from opening the game to your first Saturday rent. Follow it top to bottom. For controls, transport fares and shortcuts, see the full how-to-play guide.

1. Before you start

• You must be 18 or older. The Terms say so, and sign-up asks you to confirm it.
• It's one shared city. Everyone plays in the same Lagos. The game shares where you are in the city (for example, at the beach) so other players can see and meet you.
• It's free to start. Sign-up costs nothing. Real-money wallet top-ups exist but are optional, and in-game naira has no real-world value.
• One person, one account. The Terms ban extra accounts used to vote more than once or get around a ban.

2. Open the game

Open lagoslife.app in Safari or Chrome on your phone or computer. There's nothing to download. If you tapped a link inside Instagram, X, Facebook or TikTok, the game suggests tapping ⋯ → Open in browser first, for full screen, sound and saving it to your home screen. Stuck on a loading screen? See Lagos Life game not working fixes.

3. Create your account

1. Choose a username (3 to 20 letters, numbers or underscores) and a password of at least 6 characters.
2. Add an email. It's optional, but it's only used for password resets, and without one a lost password can't be recovered by email.
3. Tick “I'm 18 or older” to agree to the Terms and Privacy Policy, then sign up.

4. Build your Sim

Character creation runs in five steps: Look → Personality → Dream → Birth lottery → Home.

• Look: body, hairstyle, outfit, fabric (plain, Ankara, Adire or Aso-oke), skin tone and colours.
• Personality: two traits.
• Dream: one lifetime goal, such as Oga at the Top (reach the top level of any career) or Yaba Unicorn (get your startup funded at CcHub). Pick one that matches how you want to play.

5. Birth lottery: Nepo or LAPO

Step four asks what your Sim was born into, and the game's server decides. You can't choose it, and it's decided once for your account. Starting a new life won't change it.

• Nepo Baby: ₦500,000 pocket money, a furnished Lekki Phase 1 mini-flat with Daddy paying the rent, Daddy's Prado and a Branch Manager job at the bank from day one.
• LAPO Baby: a ₦60,000 LAPO loan (you repay ₦12,000 a week until ₦72,000 is cleared), Hustle 2 and 25% faster learning. You choose your home in the next step.
• The UNILAG option (LAPO Babies): on the home step you can pick a UNILAG Hall of Residence instead. You start as a 100L student in a course you choose, with no LAPO loan, a ₦1,200/week bunk and a ₦3,000 allowance every Monday.

Full comparison and tips: Nepo Baby vs LAPO Baby.

6. Your first job

Nepo Babies already work at the bank. Everyone else gets a job from the in-game phone:

1. Open your phone, pick a career and tap “Apply — start tomorrow”. Entry-level jobs need no skill. 6 newer careers need a skill level just to apply.
2. On work days, tap Go to work and arrive on time so your performance doesn't drop.
3. Finish the whole shift (leaving early cuts your pay), and win 4 tasks in a shift for a +15% bonus.

The best entry-level pay is Banking at ₦11,600 per shift. Compare all 105 positions on the Lagos Life jobs and salaries table.

7. Your first Saturday: rent

Rent comes out every Saturday morning: ₦2,400 a week in Mushin, ₦6,000 in Yaba and ₦1,200 in a UNILAG hall. Nepo Babies' Lekki rent is paid by Daddy.

• If you can't pay, it becomes debt. Owing more than 2 weeks' rent anywhere except Mushin gets you moved to Mushin.
• LAPO Babies also repay ₦12,000 every week. Miss it and 10% of that payment is added as a penalty.
• Pay tax only applies above ₦1,000,000 earned in a week, so it won't touch you in week one.

8. Week-one checklist

• ☐ Email added to your account (so you can reset your password)
• ☐ Job applied for, and every shift finished
• ☐ Rent (and the LAPO payment) set aside before Saturday
• ☐ Needs looked after before each shift: eat, sleep, bathe, have fun
• ☐ Free hours filled with no-skill side gigs: Help at the Buka (₦1,750 flat) or Carry Load (Alabaru) (₦2,250 flat)
• ☐ Your career's skill trained, so 100% performance turns into a promotion
• ☐ The map explored (press M): 28 places, each with its own hours and activities
• ☐ A vote cast at Polling Unit 001 before polls close on Sunday at 8 PM

9. What to do next

• How to play Lagos Life: controls, shortcuts, transport fares and home-screen setup.
• How to make money in Lagos Life: side gigs, businesses, the trailer and land.
• Nepo Baby vs LAPO Baby: how to play each start well.
• Lagos Life map and locations: every place with opening hours and jobs.

Beginner FAQ

Last checked: 5 October 2026. Lagos Life is in active development, so numbers can change — if something looks different in your game, the game is right.