System Design Arcade

Hyperfocused Engineer

About this app

System Design Arcade turns system design interview prep into interactive arcade-style games. No more passive reading or hour-long videos — learn by doing.

TWO TRACKS:

CONCEPT ARCADE (10 games)
Master one building block at a time:
• Caching — Redis, CDN, eviction policies
• Databases — SQL vs NoSQL, indexing, ACID
• Load Balancing — algorithms, health checks, scaling
• Sharding — partitioning strategies, consistent hashing
• CAP Theorem — consistency vs availability tradeoffs
• Networking — DNS, TCP/UDP, HTTP, WebSockets
• API Design — REST, GraphQL, rate limiting, versioning
• Async Processing — message queues, pub/sub, event-driven
• Replication — leader-follower, quorum, conflict resolution
• Estimation — back-of-envelope calculations, capacity planning

PROBLEM ARCADE (14 games)
Design real systems end-to-end:
• URL Shortener, Rate Limiter, Chat System, News Feed
• Instagram, YouTube, Uber, Dropbox, Twitter
• Typeahead, Yelp, Ticketmaster, Web Crawler, Google Docs

WHAT MAKES IT DIFFERENT:
• 24 games, 120 levels, 480+ interactive challenges
• 6 challenge types: multiple choice, ordering, fill-in-the-blank, API builder, architecture builder, and more
• Each game has 5 levels from fundamentals to scale
• Instant feedback with detailed explanations
• Track your progress with scores and streaks
• No subscriptions, no ads

Built for software engineers preparing for system design interviews, or anyone who wants to understand how large-scale systems work.