Tower Networking Inc.

Very surprising game, I don't remember my CCNA class being this fun!

Very fun and challenging game about networking.

A huge part that is missing compared to real-life IT work is a scriptable shell and associated text processing utilities (like sed or grep) that can be used to parse outputs from commands and act without player intervention, more or less equivalent to blueprint functions in other automation games. Without any automatic server or container orchestration or a way to make your own, replacing failed hardware and then [i]manually[/i] reinstalling and starting all of the services and configuring network routes turns into a slog very fast when you have dozens of servers to manage. The same goes for scaling existing infrastructure. In real life, once a server is online and configured to an orchestration control plane like Ansible or K8s, it deploys and runs automatically from there on, but even at small scale you can just remotely download or ssh a bash script that deploys everything you want to a hardcoded configuration. Also, what is up with all the unmanaged switches just being Ethernet hubs in disguise? The 4-port 1Gbps switch I use for my PC cost like 8$, and generic Ethernet hubs have basically already gone extinct because of how cheap switches got. It doesn't make much sense for them to exist in the same place as Cat5/Cat5e, let alone in enterprise usage.

things were going fine, then i accidentally unplugged the power strip running my servers from the UPS (battery backup), turns out on higher difficulty those things don't automatically restart their programs or save their network address and since i'm new to this i don't know this, the music becomes tense and i start to panic trying to figure out what commands i need to send to what servers and routers and what devices i need to manually map addresses to get the server that does that for me online. 10 outa 10, would absolutely invest in dual power for all my servers before moving the UPS next time. the art feels like a dystopian slum with wires going everywhere. (all those wires are your fault by the way) the music is has great early cyberpunk feel that matches the crunchy art and will shift when you are about to fail (as i learned). it's a lot to take in but the tutorial does teach you the basics of how to set up, could use a bit more on the "what do you do to fix this" side but it is in development so hopefully that gets added into the in game help.

I want to love this game, but this constant need for ordering cables, cables that are too short, cables that pop out (rj45 shouldn't pop out!) and the physics of it (even on minimal) absolutely enrage me. It's less network engineering and more cable management. I will not refund this game and will give it some time.

so what if simTower but you were installing the network infrastructure its great for what it is, fast paced network engineering by the seat of your pants; read the ingame docu though! (seems like a lot but its not that much, key nuances about the equipment in there) fun game, if youre a NERD (like me)

Exactly what hell looks like for a network admin👍