CrashOut

Global Leaderboard
AI Mentor Page
Example Task 2
Trivia to earn points
Learn Page
Profile Page
Practice Questions
Example Task 1
Red Team Control Panel
Home Page
Play Page
Uploading a PDF
Gameplay
Training Ground Page
Login Page
Results of trivia
Create Account Page

Learning cybersecurity can be fun and social. Traditional tutorials are boring and repetitive, so we drew inspiration from Among Us for its social deduction mechanics and multiplayer engagement. CrashOut is a multiplayer cybersecurity learning game where players join as either secret attackers or defenders inside a virtual corporate network. Attackers try to compromise the system by completing real hacking tasks like phishing, port scanning, and privilege escalation while blending in with the defenders. Defenders complete security tasks, monitor for suspicious behavior, and vote out who they think the attacker is. It's Among Us, but every action teaches you real cybersecurity concepts.

The app has three modes: Learn, where players join a shared lobby, study a topic together for 15 minutes, then compete in a trivia game to earn points Play, the full cyber skilled social deduction game with ELO-based matchmaking and AI Mentor, an autonomous personalized mentor that can teach you about anything cyber!

We built CrashOut using JavaScript and TypeScript for both the frontend and backend, with HTML and CSS handling the UI. The real-time multiplayer is all handled through WebSockets to keep everything in sync across all players simultaneously. The ELO matchmaking system runs server-side, calculating rating changes after every game based on team performance. The hardest part was designing the minigames. We wanted them to teach real cybersecurity concepts things like reading packet logs, identifying phishing emails, and understanding CVEs while still being fun and quick enough to fit inside a fast-paced multiplayer game. Finding that balance between educational depth and playability took a lot of iteration. Too technical and it stops being a game, too simple and it stops being educational.

We are really proud that CrashOut actually works as a full multiplayer experience. The Learn section, shared lobbies, timed study sessions, and a live trivia game is fully functional. The game map with real-time player movement, the voting system, and ELO matchmaking are all implemented and working. Building a real-time multiplayer game from scratch in a hackathon timeline is something we're genuinely proud of. We learned how hard it is to design for multiple audiences at once, someone who knows nothing about cybersecurity and someone who does need to both find the game fun and fair. We also learned a lot about real-time state management, keeping every player's view consistent when things are changing every second.