server-survival

Server Survival is a browser-based 3D simulation game where players act as Cloud Architects building and scaling cloud infrastructure to handle increasing traffic loads while defending against DDoS attacks. The game runs directly in the browser with no installation required, built with vanilla JavaScript (ES modules), Three.js for 3D rendering, and Tailwind CSS for UI. Three game modes provide different learning experiences: Survival mode challenges players to last as long as possible against escalating traffic, random events, and DDoS waves; Campaign mode offers 25 hand-crafted levels across 5 chapters (Basics, Optimization, Defense & Mastery, Production Readiness, The AI Wave) each teaching a specific architecture concept with objectives and debriefs; Sandbox mode provides a free-play lab with unlimited budget and configurable traffic for experimentation. The game models 26 real cloud services across five categories: Front Door (GeoDNS, CDN, Firewall, Identity Provider, API Gateway, Load Balancer), Compute (Compute fleet, Serverless Functions, Container Cluster, GPU Cluster, Inference Gateway), Data (Relational DB, NoSQL DB, Memory Cache, File Storage, Search Engine, Read Replica, Data Warehouse), Async (Message Queue, Pub/Sub, Stream, Dead-Letter Queue, Scheduler, Notification), and Ops (Monitoring, Substation). Each service has costs, capacity limits, and upkeep fees that scale over time. Core mechanics teach production cloud concepts: observability via Monitoring dashboard, auto-scaling with cold starts, queue-depth scaling, circuit breaking with retries, multi-region failover via GeoDNS, GPU inference batching with model cold starts and SLO deadlines, power constraints (8kW base + substations), OLTP vs OLAP tradeoffs, and failure-reason badges on every dropped request. Traffic types include STATIC, READ, WRITE, UPLOAD, SEARCH, MALICIOUS, and INFERENCE, each with distinct routing, rewards, and handling requirements. Players manage Budget, Reputation, and Service Health. Successful requests earn money and reputation; failures and malicious leaks damage both. Services degrade under load and require repairs. The game includes PNG diagram export and shareable URLs encoding architecture state. Available at https://pshenok.github.io/server-survival/ with a sister game Datacenter Survival covering the physical layer (power, cooling, PUE).