The Server Room – an adventure game about undocumented dependencies

This article was created with the AI assistant Claude and published by Peter Hoenig.

Everyone who has worked in IT for a while knows this note: "Switch off that old box in the basement, it only costs electricity." And everyone also knows what happens eleven minutes later. Out of that came a graphical adventure: The Server Room, four scenes, three endings, in your browser, free of charge and with nothing transmitted.

The gap between the list and reality

Three documents are lying around in the game, and they all contradict each other. The inventory list records ALTSYS-03 as "decommissioned 2014" – but the server is running. The operations manual confirms the decommissioning. And in the "changes" folder there is a request from 2011 for a temporary interface to payroll, limited to six months, never removed.

This constellation is the normal case, not the exception. Documentation is a snapshot that starts ageing the day it is finished. Reality is what is running. That is why the work in the game does not consist of deciding but of making visible: measuring what actually has a connection; following a cable that is in no plan; and asking a person who was there.

The three endings

Switched off too early. Available immediately, reachable in two clicks, and for eleven minutes everything is fine. Then payroll calls. Pay day is Monday.

Decommissioned in order. The interface moves, printing and archive are checked, the cable is documented. On Friday at 16:10 the server goes off and nobody notices. That is the highest praise a shutdown can receive – and the reason why such work is so rarely praised.

Left alone. Lights off, go home, the box keeps running. Nothing fails, nobody complains. In three years somebody else will stand there and get the same note. Doing nothing is also a decision – just one that nobody records.

Why I tell this with humour

Because the situation is funny and the consequences are not. I know the handwritten labels on the patch panel, the sticker under a layer of dust, the change request with the word "temporary" in it. Anyone who knows this from their own work laughs while playing – and afterwards has a better case for why mapping takes time. In earnest, the same question arises without a wink, and I have my own tools for it: what fails if this system stops?

In short

Free as free software, independently implemented: Open The Server Room. If you want to know what really depends on what in your organisation before somebody finds out the hard way: that is exactly the work I do in architecture management – ideally starting with a free initial consultation.

Company, characters, system names and plot are entirely invented. Any resemblance to existing server rooms is unavoidable.