ServerBound
A cybersecurity investigation RPG set in the World Wide Wonder — where every network is a neighborhood.
ServerBound is a cybersecurity investigation RPG where players explore the World Wide Wonder — a living network reimagined as interconnected neighborhoods. You play as an investigator, learning cybersecurity not through tutorials but through spatial exploration, conversation, and deduction.
The Premise
What if you could walk through the internet? Not a visualisation — a place. Where firewalls are guards, packets are citizens, and vulnerabilities are structural cracks in buildings that shouldn’t be there.
The World Wide Wonder is that place. Four neighborhoods — the Bazaar (commerce), the Commons (public infrastructure), the Archive (data storage), and the Underbelly (shadow networks) — each representing a layer of real network architecture. Each with its own visual identity, characters, and threats.
Core Mechanics
The Theory Board — A cork-board investigation mechanic where players pin evidence, draw connections, and form theories about network incidents. Inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn and Her Story, but mapped to cybersecurity causal reasoning.
Inspect & Browse — The primary interaction loop mirrors the browser dev tools. Players Browse the surface of the World Wide Wonder, then Inspect elements to reveal hidden data, misconfigured services, and suspicious patterns.
Data Packet Currency — Information is the medium of exchange. Players observe how data flows through the city, revealing the economic structures of the internet — attention economies, data brokerage, surveillance.
Portrait Conversations — Network entities speak as characters, Disco Elysium-style. A firewall is a stern guard. A load balancer is a harried traffic cop. Their personalities reflect their actual behavior.
Current Status
Pre-production. The Bazaar neighborhood is the first playable area. Targeting Steam Next Fest, October 2026.
Design Writing
The design process is documented in the garden:
- Designing ServerBound — the full design philosophy
- What Is a Packet? — the foundational concept the game makes tangible