SysAdmin Crisis

SysAdmin Crisis is a night-shift simulation where I wanted the command line to be more than surface: the syntax is a gamified Unix, and real commands accept their common flags. top really reads the server load, logs really lists the event history, block_ip really cuts off an attack source; there are twenty-nine commands in total, Tab completion works, and man <command> opens a built-in manual. The shift is built from seven event types; the tutorial section introduces two of them — a memory leak and a DDoS — at a slowed-down pace, using the same commands. The tension only lands if the syntax is actually functional rather than cosmetic.

The web version (a Next.js-based PWA) and the mobile version (Expo) share the same game engine; on mobile, the terminal screen is drawn with native components rather than a WebView. Part of the development discipline is not left to code review: a dependency audit, lint, type-checking, the test suite and coverage measurement all run automatically in CI on every push. Zero data collection is likewise not a privacy statement but a constraint tied to code — fetch/XMLHttpRequest usage in the game packages is blocked by lint rules, and analytics or ad clients leaking into dependencies are blocked by a separate dependency-audit script. While the game runs, no network request is made beyond the initial page load and the service worker update; there are no accounts, analytics or ads.

SysAdmin Crisis was prepared for release as v1.0.0 and is playable today at sysadmincrisis.com; it receives no new development, only security and compatibility fixes.