REQ/S

Your first day... your first outage.

You run the infrastructure behind a startup’s website, from servers and traffic routes to caches and safeguards. Each level brings more traffic, timed incidents, and new problems from other departments. Build the system and keep it online.

8-Level Career Campaign

Start on probation and work through eight connected levels, from surviving your first months and earning a promotion to handling budget cuts and an acquisition. Your money, upgrades, features, and infrastructure carry forward between levels, and failing an objective ends the run permanently. Finish the campaign and you can keep going in Endless Mode to chase a higher score.

Every Level Changes the Assignment

Objectives may require you to:

• Survive for a set amount of time

• Process a target number of requests

• Reach a revenue goal

• Keep dropped requests below a limit

• Maintain average response time through a boss window

• Complete several objectives at once

Build the Request Path

Build the path from the Website to a completed request using Load Balancers, Web Servers, Databases, Caches, Workers, Filters, CDNs, and other infrastructure nodes. Place them directly on the board or insert them into existing routes, weighing each node’s tradeoffs before you buy: more capacity costs more, extra protection can add delay, and higher income can bring traffic your system isn’t ready for.

Watch the System Break Down

Nodes deteriorate as load climbs: Fine → Sweating → On Fire → Burnt Out. Hold a node at 100% load for eight seconds and it burns out, taking its capacity and connected routes with it. Runs can also end through bankruptcy, a complete outage, prolonged request failures, or users abandoning the site during a boss wave.

Plan Between Levels. Improvise During Them.

The upgrades step is where you prepare for what comes next. Invest in permanent upgrades, choose from a rotating set of temporary tools, and decide which three are worth carrying into the next crisis. You can’t bring everything, so every choice shapes how ready you’ll be when the system starts to fail.

Add Features. Accept the Traffic.

Website Features let you push the business harder. Add new ways to generate revenue, unlock more feature slots as the campaign progresses, and decide how much extra demand your infrastructure can afford. More income gives you room to expand, but every new feature gives the system more traffic to handle.

15 Optional Red Flags

Red Flags remix the campaign with tougher rules and bigger score multipliers. Unlock them through accomplishments, stack as many as you dare, and turn familiar runs into new problems: missing information, tighter restrictions, unstable income, and unwanted interference from the rest of the company.

Features

• 8-level career campaign with run-ending failure

• Endless mode carries on after the campaign 

• Persistent infrastructure, money, upgrades, and features between levels

• 15 unlockable Red Flag difficulty modifiers

• 42 achievements

• Fully playable offline

Planned Support

• macOS support

• Steam Deck support

• Additional Red Flags and challenges

• More Endless Mode content