HackinGames
A security-training arcade — hands-on hacking games with XP, ranks, and career tracks, playable in the browser with zero installs.
The challenge
Security training has a motivation problem. The material is dry, the certifications are expensive abstractions, and the practical tools assume a Linux VM and a free weekend. Most people who'd be good at this bounce off the first wall of jargon. The brief: make security practice feel like an arcade — something you pick up for ten minutes and accidentally play for an hour.
The approach
We built HackinGames as a game first and a curriculum second. Fourteen hands-on modules — password cracking, cipher breaking, phishing spotting, login bypass — run entirely in the browser across four difficulty tiers, so the time from landing to first hack is seconds, not setup guides. A "ghost shell" on the homepage lets visitors start typing commands before they've signed up for anything. Progress is a game loop: XP, levels, ranks from Script Kiddie upward. Career tracks map the play to real certification paths, and a Pro tier (Stripe) unlocks the deep end — the free arcade is the funnel.
The result
A training product with a genuinely low floor and a serious ceiling: zero installs, instant play, and a progression system that turns practice into a habit. The free-to-play arcade does the marketing, the career tracks give the play direction, and the Pro tier monetizes the players who get hooked. Built on Cloudflare's edge with serverless functions — no fleet of servers to babysit, which matters when your audience's hobby is finding weaknesses.