Datacenter Builder gameplay: picking rivals, rerolling the map, building a campus, the power view, training a model, the newspaper, a protest and leveling a hill

Datacenter
Builder

Build the grid. Cool the racks. Serve the tokens.

An isometric city-builder about running an AI datacenter campus. Wire up power, water, cooling, fiber and roads, license real AI models, keep the neighbouring towns on side, and outlast the hyperscalers when the price wars start.

WebAssembly raylib 6.2 / C11 real AI models vs AWS · Azure · Google · Oracle
▶ Play in browser Watch the video

Runs entirely client-side · the native game, compiled to wasm

Your job: keep the tokens flowing

You run DCB Cloud. A datacenter is useless on its own: it needs power, water for its cooling towers, fiber to the internet exchange, and a road so the staff can get to work. Get all four connected and it starts serving tokens for whichever AI models you've licensed, from open-weights Llama and Qwen to Claude, GPT and Gemini.

Then the world pushes back. Gas plants choke the nearest village in smog until residents blockade your gates. Heat waves cripple your chillers, storms knock out the regional grid, and new GPU generations make your racks obsolete. In vs Hyperscalers mode, rival campuses open across the valley, poach customers every time you go dark, and start price wars. Every headline on the ticker opens a front page of The Datacenter Daily, written from your own game's numbers, with a newsprint photo of the scene.

It runs right here

The same C and raylib game, compiled to WebAssembly and WebGL 2. Generate a valley, pick your rivals and start building. Your quicksave is kept in the browser, so Save and Continue work across visits. Sound starts with your first click.

▶ Start building

Gallery

A powered, cooled and connected datacenter with the token market chart and building panel open
A working campus: the token market on the left, the datacenter's power, cooling, network and deployed models on the right
The map picker with terrain toggles
Pick your map: reroll the valley and set mountains, forests and water while the splines reticulate
The power view showing each power network's supply and demand
The power view: every network's generation, load and battery reserve
The Datacenter Daily newspaper front page
The Datacenter Daily: click any headline for the full story
Villagers picketing a polluting gas plant
Protest! Smog and noise push a village to blockade your plants
The train-a-new-model dialog
Train your own model: tie up GPUs for days and get a model nobody else can sell
The training complete celebration
Training complete: license-free, ready to deploy
The reputation and community window with charts
Reputation & Community: uptime per datacenter, recent outages and each town's mood
Leveling a hill with the Level Ground tool
Level Ground: drag a box to flatten a hill for your next build

What's in it

Utility networks

Power lines, water pipes, fiber and roads, solved as connected networks. Buildings that touch share everything; a network that can't carry the load browns out.

Real power dispatch

Solar, wind, nuclear, gas, the regional grid, batteries and diesel, dispatched cleanest first. Sell your surplus back to the grid at the evening peak.

Real AI models

License and deploy real models with their parameter counts, GPU needs, prices and market share. New releases are rumoured, then launch, and older models fade.

Neighbours with opinions

Smog and noise drift into the villages. Fines come first, then anger, then picket lines that turn your workers away. Trees, scrubbers and sound walls help.

Weather and seasons

Heat waves sap your chillers, droughts halve your pumps, winter storms take down the grid, and cold snaps make heat reuse pay.

Rival hyperscalers

AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and Oracle each play differently: the fast builder, the price fighter, the model house and the late heavyweight.

Train your own model

Commit thousands of GPUs for days, name the result, and deploy a model that costs you nothing to license.

Growing towns

Villages add homes and streets when they're happy and there are jobs nearby. Hit population goals for town grants.

Terrain that matters

Rivers, mountains and forests on every generated map. Roads grade the ground, bridges span the river, and Level Ground flattens a site.

Buildings

Every building in the game with its cost and stats
The catalog: every building with its cost, output and footprint

How you play it

Pan the mapWASD · right-drag
Zoom toward the cursorscroll
Rotate / tilt the cameraQ E · R F
Place, select, start a lineLMB
Cancel the tool, close panelsRMB · Esc
Pause, game speedSpace · 1 2 3
Reset the viewC
Save / loadSave · Load buttons

In the browser, use the Save and Load buttons in the top bar: F5 reloads the page. The quicksave lives in your browser's storage.

Under the hood

Engineraylib 6.2 · pure C11 · cJSON
Web buildEmscripten → WebAssembly + WebGL 2, about 3.5 MB in all
Renderinglit low-poly shader, orthographic isometric camera, Kenney models
Simulationunion-find utility networks, power dispatch, pollution and noise fields
SavesJSON quicksaves; IndexedDB in the browser
Sourcegithub.com/binRick/dcb

Keep the lights on

No install. Pick a valley, pick your rivals and start building.

▶ Play Datacenter Builder Source on GitHub