Bangalore Based Founder Rinkesh Gorasia Brings School Time Pen Fight Online

A game that once lived on the last benches of Indian classrooms has now made its way to the internet. Bangalore-based founder Rinkesh Gorasia has built an online version of the classic pen fight game, giving a familiar childhood pastime a digital format.

Called Pen Fight, the browser-based game lets users recreate the simple competition many people remember from school. Players can challenge others, compete for a place on the leaderboard and try to become the Pen Fight Champion of their class. The game is available at PenFight.xyz

The idea is simple, but its early response on social media suggests that the nostalgia behind it is powerful. Within the first 24 hours, Rinkesh said that more than 6,000 matches had already been played on the platform.

A childhood game, recreated for the internet

For many Indian students, pen fight was never an organised sport. It was something that happened casually during a free period, between classes or whenever students found themselves sitting around a desk with a few minutes to spare.

The rules were also simple. Two players would place their pens on a desk or notebook and take turns flicking them. The objective was to knock the other person's pen off the playing area. Depending on the school or group of friends, the rules could change, but the basic idea remained the same.

The pen itself often became part of the competition. Students had their preferred pens, and some were considered better for pen fights because of their weight, shape or balance. In some cases, students would even bet their best pens on the outcome.

Rinkesh's online version takes that familiar experience and puts it inside a digital classroom. The game's website uses school-inspired visuals, while the concept itself revolves around the same simple competition that many users remember from their childhood.

When announcing the game on X, Rinkesh wrote that he had made “the pen fight game we all played in our school” and asked users if they could win it and become the Pen Fight Champion of their class.

The winner also gets to keep a Trimax, adding a physical reward to the digital competition.

The launch quickly triggered nostalgia on social media

Much of the attention around Pen Fight has come from people sharing their memories of playing the game themselves.

One user, Girish Shedge, reposted Rinkesh's announcement and said the game was so cool that it had taken him back to his school days. He also suggested that another creator could turn the concept into a reel.

Another reaction came from Abhishek Swami, who described the game as something that had “hit our nostalgia right in the feels.” Referring to people who grew up in the 1990s and early 2000s, he said they would immediately know what the game was and that it brought back memories of his childhood.

These reactions are important because Pen Fight is not trying to introduce users to a completely new game. It is bringing back something they already know.

That familiarity appears to be one of the biggest reasons people are sharing it. Someone who has never heard of Pen Fight may need an explanation, but for someone who played it in school, the concept can be understood almost instantly.

More than 6,000 matches in the first 24 hours

The early numbers shared by Rinkesh indicate that the game managed to attract significant attention soon after launch.

In an update following the release, he said that more than 6,000 matches had already been played in the previous 24 hours. He also said that 65 people had won the Trimax and become champions during that period.

The game has a leaderboard where players can see who is performing best. At the time of Rinkesh's update, a player identified as Rishabh was leading the leaderboard by a significant margin.

This changes the nature of the original school game slightly. In a classroom, a pen fight usually involved the person sitting next to you. On Pen Fight, the competition can extend beyond your immediate group of friends.

The leaderboard gives players another reason to keep playing and try to move ahead of other participants.

Pen Fight brings the classroom online

The design of the game is built heavily around the school experience. One of the modes shown by Rinkesh is called The Class Championship.

In this mode, players are shown a classroom-style setting and can compete against other players for the championship. The game also allows users to play against a friend by sharing a link.

This social element could be particularly important for the game's growth. Instead of discovering the game and playing alone, users can send it directly to someone they know and challenge them.

That creates a simple sharing loop. One person plays Pen Fight, remembers their school days, sends it to a friend and starts a match. The friend then has a reason to share it with someone else.

For a small internet product, this kind of behaviour can be more valuable than traditional advertising because the product itself becomes the distribution channel.

Multiplayer takes the idea beyond nostalgia

Rinkesh also announced that the multiplayer version of Pen Fight would go live, making the game more social and competitive.

Multiplayer could be an important next step for the product because nostalgia may be enough to get someone to try the game once, but competition is what could bring them back.

The original classroom version of pen fight was inherently social. You were not playing against a computer. You were playing against your friend, classmate or someone sitting across the desk.

The online version recreates that part of the experience by allowing people to compete with each other remotely.

This also makes the game easier to share. A player does not need to explain a complicated set of rules before sending it to someone. The person receiving the link can simply open it and understand what they are supposed to do.

Why a simple idea is getting attention

Pen Fight is interesting because it does not depend on a complicated game mechanic.

The original concept is already familiar to a large group of Indian internet users. The product therefore spends less time teaching users how to play and more time recreating the feeling associated with the game.

That is also visible in the reactions on social media. Most of the comments are not detailed reviews of the game's technology or mechanics. Instead, people are talking about school.

That distinction matters.

The product is effectively selling an experience that people already have an emotional connection with. The game is simply the format through which that memory comes back.

The classroom visuals, the pen, the idea of a class championship and even the Trimax reward all reinforce that connection.

The Trimax becomes more than just a prize

The decision to use a Trimax as the prize is another part of the nostalgia.

For many Indian students, pens were closely tied to school life. A particular pen could become a favourite, while certain pens were considered better for writing, drawing or, in this case, fighting.

Rinkesh's launch post directly refers to people betting their best pens on pen fights. The online game turns that childhood behaviour into a digital reward system.

The player wins the competition online, but the prize brings the experience back into the physical world.

It is a small detail, but it fits the larger idea behind Pen Fight. The product is not trying to modernise the game completely. It is trying to preserve the things that made it memorable.

A broader trend of turning offline memories into internet products

Pen Fight is also an example of a broader trend among internet creators and founders: taking simple experiences from everyday life and turning them into digital products.

The idea does not necessarily need to solve a major problem. It can simply create a moment of entertainment, nostalgia or connection.

This is particularly relevant for products aimed at India's internet audience, where millions of users share similar cultural experiences from school, college and childhood.

A familiar game can therefore become a strong starting point for a social product because the audience already understands the context.

In Pen Fight's case, the first few days of user reactions suggest that the concept has managed to tap into that shared memory.

What comes next for Pen Fight?

The initial launch has given Pen Fight attention, but the bigger challenge will be converting that attention into long-term usage.

Nostalgia can get people to open a website once. Multiplayer, leaderboards and friend challenges can potentially give them a reason to return.

The game's next phase will therefore depend on how well it can build a community around the competition. If users start challenging friends regularly, competing for leaderboard positions and sharing their results, the product could become more than a nostalgia experiment.

For now, however, Pen Fight has achieved something relatively difficult for a small internet product. It has given people a reason to talk about something that happened long before they were spending their time online.

From the last bench to the internet

The success of Pen Fight so far is not necessarily about building the most advanced browser game. It is about understanding something that people already care about.

For a generation that grew up playing games on classroom desks instead of smartphones, pen fight is a familiar memory. Rinkesh has taken that memory and recreated it as an online experience with multiplayer matches, leaderboards, class championships and real-world rewards.

More than 6,000 matches in the first 24 hours, according to Rinkesh, show that people were willing to give the idea a try. The reactions on social media suggest that the game is doing something beyond simply providing entertainment. It is reminding people of a very specific part of their childhood.

The classroom may be gone, the last bench may have been replaced by a laptop, and the school bell may have stopped ringing years ago.

But for now, the pen fight is back.

Pen Fight is also a reminder to build Proof of Work

There is another interesting lesson in what Rinkesh has done with Pen Fight. He had an idea, built something around it, put it online and got real people to use it. That is proof of work. For someone building a career today, you do not always have to wait for a company to give you an opportunity before you can show what you are capable of.

If you want to become a product manager, for example, you can pick an app you use every day, identify a problem, redesign a feature and document your thinking. If you are interested in marketing, create a campaign for a brand and explain how you would acquire its first 1,000 users. If you want to become a founder, take a small problem you notice and build a simple solution around it.

Some proof of work ideas you can start with:

• Aspiring Product Manager: Build a product teardown of an app you use regularly and suggest three improvements.
• Future Founder: Find a small problem around you, build a simple MVP and get your first 10 users.
• Marketer: Create a complete marketing campaign for a brand, including the strategy, creatives and distribution plan.
• Designer: Redesign a poor user experience and explain the decisions behind your design.
• Developer: Build a small tool that solves a real problem and publish the project publicly.
• Growth Professional: Take a startup with an interesting product and create a plan to get its first 1,000 users.
• AI Enthusiast: Build a small AI tool around a problem you personally face and document what you learned.
• Content Creator: Start a content experiment around a topic you understand and share the results after 30 days.

The point is not that every project needs to become a startup. The point is to keep creating. A small experiment today can become a portfolio project tomorrow, and sometimes it can even become a business.

The best proof of work is often created when you are simply curious about something. So keep building, keep experimenting and keep documenting what you learn. Your career portfolio should not be something you create only when you start looking for a job. It should grow with you throughout your career.

How to play Pen Fight online?

Anyone can try the game through PenFight.xyz, where users can play the digital version of the school-time game, compete in championships and challenge friends.

Pen Fight at a glance:

• Creator: Rinkesh Gorasia
• Base: Bangalore
• Game: Pen Fight
• Platform: Web browser
• Website: PenFight.xyz
• Concept: Online version of the traditional school pen fight game
• Early traction: 6,000+ matches reported in the first 24 hours
• Champions: 65 players had won the Trimax at the time of the update
• Features: Multiplayer, friend matches, class championship and leaderboard
• Core appeal: Nostalgia, competition and social sharing

Who is Rinkesh Gorasia?

Rinkesh Gorasia is a Bengaluru-based product builder and entrepreneur who has spent the last decade building internet products and companies. Before creating Pen Fight, Gorasia founded multiple startups across healthcare and education. His first startup, Savior, helped 85 hospitals across India manage their daily operations. The company was bootstrapped, became profitable, and was acquired by Zocdoc in 2020.

He later founded Career Leap, a live learning platform that grew to more than 10,000 learners. After running the company for three years, Gorasia decided to shut it down after realising that the product and business were not going to scale in the way he wanted.

Since then, he has continued experimenting with products across different domains, including AI, while also working with other founders on product and growth. Pen Fight is one of his latest experiments, but unlike a typical startup product, it started with something much simpler: a childhood game that many Indians already knew.

That background makes Pen Fight an interesting extension of Rinkesh's approach to building products. Instead of starting with a complex business problem, he has taken a familiar offline experience and turned it into a simple internet product that people can discover, play and share with their friends.

The user and match figures mentioned in this article are based on updates shared publicly by Rinkesh Gorasia on X. The reactions referenced are from public posts shared around the launch of Pen Fight.