The data center industry is in crisis. Nearly two-thirds of operators report difficulty finding and retaining qualified staff. The AI boom demands tens of thousands more engineers, with global data center demand projected to grow over 20% by 2030 — yet the construction workforce alone faces a projected shortage of 3.2 million workers by the end of the decade. The people who will fill these roles are teenagers right now, and they've never thought about what happens inside the buildings that power every app on their phone.
Video games are how the next generation discovers what they care about. Hay Day made a generation romanticize farming. City builders made kids dream about urban planning. Server Rush does the same for data infrastructure — it takes the invisible backbone of the internet and turns it into something you can see, touch, and fall in love with. If we want to close a workforce gap of millions, we need to start by making the work feel exciting. That starts with play.
Sources: Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025 · IEEE Spectrum · Brookings
A cozy data center tycoon where incidents are the star of the show. Inspired by the charm of Hay Day and Stardew Valley, it swaps crops and barns for server racks and cooling units — warm earth tones, bouncy animations, and a world that grows with you as you expand from a single closet into a sprawling facility.
Build server racks, keep them cool, power them up — then firefight a nonstop stream of crises by dragging the right tool onto the right rack before everything melts down.
An AI guide character named Chip roams your data center, powered by Mistral AI. He reacts to what's happening in real time — warning you about incidents, celebrating milestones, and answering questions when you tap him. His voice is brought to life by ElevenLabs, giving Chip a distinct spoken personality that makes the experience feel alive rather than text-on-screen.
Built for the Mistral AI Worldwide Hackathon (Feb 28 – Mar 1, 2026).
Place equipment on an isometric grid to grow your data center from a single closet into a sprawling operation.
| Category | What it does | Equipment |
|---|---|---|
| Servers | Generate revenue | Basic Rack → Advanced → Enterprise |
| Cooling | Prevent overheating | AC Unit → Cooling Tower → Liquid Cooling |
| Power | Supply electricity | Generator → UPS → Industrial PSU |
| Network | Add bandwidth | Switch → Firewall → Load Balancer |
The real game. Incidents telegraph 2 seconds before going live, then you drag the matching tool to fix them:
| Incident | Tool | What happens if you don't |
|---|---|---|
| Overheating | Fire Extinguisher | Racks take 4 damage/sec, lose 50% revenue |
| DDoS Attack | Shield | 2 damage/sec, lose 70% revenue |
| Cable Failure | Cable Plug | 3 damage/sec, lose 30% revenue |
| Power Outage | Wrench | 5 damage/sec, cascades to nearby racks |
Incidents get more frequent as you add more racks. By the time you have 10+ racks, you're in full whack-a-mole mode.
Start with a 6x6 grid. Buy expansion tiles at the edges (Hay Day style) to unlock larger areas and higher-tier equipment. Three expansion zones scale from $800 to $5,000.
Milestones guide you through the game: build 3 equipment, earn $1,000, resolve 5 incidents, purchase your first expansion, and so on. Each milestone triggers a popup and unlocks new goals.
Chip is a round orange character in a hard hat who wanders your data center. He reacts to what you're doing with short, personalized quips generated by the Mistral AI API:
- Celebrates when you build or hit milestones
- Warns when power or cooling is overloaded
- Comments on your revenue, incidents, and expansion progress
- Falls back to local dialogue strings if the API is unavailable
Chip calls mistral-small-latest with rich game context (money, revenue, equipment count, incident status, resource percentages). API usage is throttled to max 1 call per 45 seconds.
SwiftUI (HUD, menus, guide) <--> GameState (@Observable) <--> SpriteKit (iso world, sprites, particles)
21 Swift files, ~6,000 lines. Single GameState source of truth shared between SwiftUI overlays and the SpriteKit scene.
| Layer | Files | Role |
|---|---|---|
| Game Loop | GameScene, SimulationEngine, IncidentScheduler |
60 FPS rendering + 1 Hz simulation ticks |
| Input | InputHandler, CameraController |
Tap-to-select, drag-to-build, drag-to-fix, pinch zoom + pan |
| Rendering | IsometricUtils (TextureFactory) |
Programmatic isometric sprites with per-category visual details |
| Models | GameState, Equipment, Incident, Level |
All game data, equipment stats, incident definitions, milestones |
| Services | MistralService, ElevenLabsService, AudioManager, SoundEngine |
Mistral API for Chip + ElevenLabs TTS + haptics + procedural sound effects |
| Views | ContentView, HUDView, BuildMenuView, RackInfoView, etc. |
SwiftUI overlay system |
| Design | Theme |
Centralized color palette, fonts, spacing |
ServerRush/
Game/
GameScene.swift Main SpriteKit scene (rendering, particles, guide AI)
IsometricUtils.swift Coordinate math + programmatic texture generation
SimulationEngine.swift 1-sec tick: revenue, resource balance, damage, milestones
IncidentScheduler.swift Random event spawning with telegraph system
InputHandler.swift Touch handling, drag-to-fix
CameraController.swift Pinch zoom + pan with inertia
Models/
GameState.swift @Observable central state, save/load
Equipment.swift 12 equipment types across 4 categories
Incident.swift 4 incident types, tools, active/telegraphed models
Level.swift Milestone definitions and progression
Services/
MistralService.swift Mistral API integration for Chip
ElevenLabsService.swift ElevenLabs TTS for Chip's voice
AudioManager.swift Haptic feedback patterns
SoundEngine.swift Procedural sound synthesis (AVAudioEngine)
Views/
ContentView.swift Root view, phase-based routing
MainMenuView.swift Title screen with server illustration
BuildMenuView.swift Collapsible equipment selector
HUDView.swift Resources, objective tracker
RackInfoView.swift Equipment details, upgrade/sell
IncidentAlertView.swift Active incident list
AIGuideView.swift Chip's speech bubble with typewriter effect
ExpansionConfirmView.swift Purchase confirmation modal
LevelCompleteView.swift Milestone achievement popup
Theme.swift Design system (colors, fonts, spacing)
ServerRushApp.swift App entry point
Warm, cozy Hay Day / Stardew Valley aesthetic.
| Role | Color | Hex |
|---|---|---|
| Background | Warm cream | #F5E6D3 |
| Cards | Soft tan | #E8D7C6 |
| Primary accent | Warm orange | #E8985E |
| Secondary | Warm gold | #D4A574 |
| Positive | Sage green | #7DB77D |
| Critical | Warm rust | #D85B56 |
| Text | Dark brown | #3D2B1F |
| Wood accents | — | #A0845C |
All sprites are generated programmatically at runtime (no image assets). Equipment blocks are isometric with category-specific details:
- Racks: shelf dividers, LED status dots, side ventilation slits
- Cooling: fan circles on top face, grille lines
- Power: lightning bolt, gauge panel, battery indicators
- Network: port grids with active link highlight, antenna stubs
Fonts use SF Pro Rounded throughout (monospaced only for the money counter).
- SpriteKit — isometric game world, particles, animations
- SwiftUI — all UI overlays (HUD, menus, modals)
- @Observable (iOS 17+) — reactive state management
- Mistral AI API —
mistral-small-latestfor Chip's dialogue - ElevenLabs API — text-to-speech for Chip's voice
- AVAudioEngine — procedural sound effects (13 synthesized sounds, zero asset files)
- XcodeGen — project generation from
project.yml - UserDefaults — JSON-encoded save/load
No external dependencies. No CocoaPods, no SPM packages.
Requires Xcode 16+ and iOS 17+ simulator or device.
# Generate Xcode project and build
cd ServerRush
xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -project ServerRush.xcodeproj \
-scheme ServerRush \
-destination 'platform=iOS Simulator,name=iPhone 17 Pro' \
build
# Or open in Xcode
xcodegen generate && open ServerRush.xcodeprojRacks consume power, generate heat, and use bandwidth. If any resource exceeds capacity:
- Power overload: racks take 2 damage/tick
- Cooling overload: racks take 3 damage/tick
- Bandwidth overload: racks take 1 damage/tick
| Range | Status | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| 61–100 | Normal | Full revenue |
| 25–60 | Warning | Full revenue (yellow indicator) |
| 1–24 | Critical | Full revenue (red indicator) |
| 0 | Offline | Zero revenue, takes up space |
| Racks | Interval |
|---|---|
| 0 | 30–45s |
| 1 | 25–40s |
| 2–3 | 18–30s |
| 4–6 | 12–22s |
| 7–10 | 8–16s |
| 11+ | 5–22s |
| Zone | Cost | Grid | Unlocks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting | Free | 6x6 center | Basic Rack, AC Unit, Generator |
| 1 | $800 | 10x10 | Advanced Rack, Cooling Tower |
| 2 | $1,500 | 14x14 | UPS, Network Switch, Firewall |
| 3 | $5,000 | 16x16 | Enterprise Rack, Liquid Cooling, Load Balancer |
Game state is automatically persisted to UserDefaults as JSON. Tracks money, all placed equipment, expansion state, unlocked equipment, milestones, incident stats, uptime, and play time. Continue from the main menu to resume.
Built for the Mistral AI Worldwide Hackathon 2026.