A visual sandbox game for learning distributed systems design — inspired by Poly Bridge.
You're given a system design challenge: handle 50K RPS, hit p99 < 200ms, stay under $800/mo, survive an AZ outage. You have a palette of cloud components — load balancers, caches, databases, queues — to drag, drop, connect, and configure. Hit simulate. Watch traffic flow. Watch things break. Iterate.
| Document | Description |
|---|---|
| Game Design | Core game loop, mechanics, modes, scoring |
| Tech Architecture | Stack choices, system design, key decisions |
| Simulation Design | How the sim engine models distributed system behavior |
| Components Catalog | Every building block, its properties, and behavior |
| Level Design | Campaign levels, win conditions, concepts taught |
| Roadmap | Phased delivery plan with estimates |
Poly Bridge works because the physics simulation is honest — your bridge fails in physically plausible ways, teaching structural intuition through failure. Poly-SD applies this to distributed systems: traffic flows honestly through your architecture. Queues back up. Databases saturate. Caches go cold. Cascades happen. The simulation can't be fooled — you either hit SLA or you don't. Every level has a single honest judge and multiple valid solutions, just like Poly Bridge.
Live — Phases 0–6 complete. Full campaign playable (25 levels across Tutorial + Tiers 1–5), simulation engine running in a Web Worker, auth + persistence via Clerk + Supabase, replay sharing, and per-level leaderboards. See Roadmap for phase-by-phase details.