Server Survival — Play Server Survival Online Free
A tower defense where the towers are load balancers, CDNs, and caches — survive the traffic, learn how the web actually scales.
Server Survival is open source (MIT) by pshenok; the official GitHub Pages deployment is embedded unmodified.
Keyboard Controls
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
| Mouse | Place, select, and upgrade infrastructure |
| Scroll | Zoom or browse the map |
| Esc | Deselect the current tool |
Quick Answer
Server Survival is a free, open-source tower defense game (MIT) where you defend a website from traffic waves using load balancers, caches, and CDNs — the towers behave like the real infrastructure they represent, so you learn cloud scaling concepts while playing. No download, no account; it runs entirely in your browser, embedded from the developer’s official GitHub Pages site.
How It Works
Click Launch, then start a run
Place infrastructure — servers and caches — along the request path
Upgrade and add load balancing as traffic waves grow harder
Keep the site alive: let too many requests through and you lose
Key Facts
- Tower defense mapped to real web infrastructure
- Learn load balancing, caching, and scaling by playing
- Open source (MIT) and actively developed
- Vanilla JavaScript — light and fast to load
- Embedded unmodified from the official deployment
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Server Survival?
Server Survival is an open-source tower defense game by pshenok in which the "towers" are web infrastructure: load balancers, origin servers, caches, and CDNs fending off waves of user traffic. Beyond the fun premise, it models real behavior — caches absorb repeated requests, load balancers spread load — so it doubles as a playful introduction to cloud architecture.
Do I need to know cloud computing to play?
No — it plays like a normal tower defense, and the infrastructure concepts are introduced gradually. If you do know the domain, the tower behaviors will feel surprisingly accurate, which is where much of the fun comes from.
Is it really free and open source?
Yes — MIT-licensed on GitHub, hosted by the developer on GitHub Pages, and embedded here unmodified. No ads of its own, no account, nothing uploaded.
Does it work on mobile?
It is a mouse-first strategy game, so desktop is the comfortable way to play. Modern tablets work for casual sessions.