Failover

Build a cloud that survives the traffic

Click to build and link. WASD or drag to pan, wheel to zoom, Q and E to turn, Space to pause.

A cloud architecture survival game. Place firewalls, load balancers, servers and databases, wire them up from the Internet, and keep money and reputation above water as the traffic grows and incidents strike.

About Failover

Failover is a free cloud architecture game. You start with $500, an empty grid and the Internet at one edge. Traffic arrives as requests of different kinds: static files, reads, writes, uploads, searches, later AI inference, and a steady share of malicious ones. Every request needs a path through services you build and link together. Answered requests earn money and reputation; dropped ones cost both. The run lasts as long as your design does.

How to play

Pick a service from the Build menu and click an empty tile to place it. Each one costs money up front and upkeep while it runs.
Choose Link, then click a source and a target to send traffic from one to the other. Start from the Internet; a link only goes where the request types allow.
A first design that works: Internet to Firewall to Load Balancer to Compute, with a database behind Compute.
Select a service to see its tier and health, and upgrade it when it runs hot.
Watch money and reputation. The run ends when reputation reaches zero or the account falls $1,000 into the red.
Press Daily for today's Daily Incident: the same traffic and trouble for everyone that UTC day. A finished run can be posted to the daily board.
Share copies a link to your build, and Save keeps a run in this browser. Sandbox Mode has a large budget and no failure.

Controls

Mouse: Click a tile to place or pick, drag to pan, and use the wheel to zoom.
Touch: Tap to pick. A placement or a demolish asks you to confirm. Two fingers pan and pinch to zoom.
1, 2, 3: The Select, Link and Demolish tools. Escape cancels.
WASD or arrow keys: Pan the board.
Q, E and T: Turn the board a quarter left or right, and switch to the top-down view.
Space: Pause or resume. The speed buttons run the game at 1x, 2x or 3x.

Tips and strategy

Put a Firewall first. Malicious requests that get through cost money and reputation.
Spread the load before it hurts: add a Load Balancer and more Compute, or upgrade.
Cache what you can. A Memory Cache answers repeat reads cheaply, and a CDN serves static files.
Keep cash for incidents. Cost spikes, bursts and outages arrive without warning.

Quick facts

Services: 26 types, from firewalls and load balancers to GPU clusters and substations
Starting budget: $500
Run ends: Reputation at zero, or $1,000 in debt
Simulation: 20 fixed steps per second from a seed, so a run replays exactly
In this version: Survival, a Daily Incident with a leaderboard, Sandbox Mode, saves and shared builds. The campaign is not in yet.
Sound: Synthesized in your browser, off until you turn it on

FAQ

Do I need to know cloud architecture to play Failover?

No. Each service does one job, and the link rules only let you connect what makes sense. Playing teaches the rest.

Why are my requests failing?

Usually there is no path for that kind of request, or a node is over capacity. Writes need a database and uploads need file storage.

Is there a campaign or a daily challenge?

There is a daily challenge. The Daily Incident is the same for everyone each UTC day, and the server replays your actions before it ranks your score. There is no campaign yet.

What is Failover based on?

Failover is a port of Server Survival by Kostyantyn Pshenychnyy, an open source game under the MIT license. The simulation was ported to TypeScript; the graphics, sound and words are new.