I made a system design game because I’m tired of “FAANG Mock Interview Part 47” YouTube videos

Six months ago I was prepping for system design interviews and I genuinely could not sit through one more hour of someone in front of a whiteboard saying *"consider load balancer, then we add cache."*

So I built **System Design Arcade** — an iOS + Android app that teaches system design as a retro-arcade game. CRT glow, PressStart2P font, the whole vibe. Three tracks:

- **Concepts** — one building block per game (caching, sharding, replication, rate limiting), 5 levels each
- **Problems** — design URL Shortener, Rate Limiter, news feed, etc.
- **Tools** — hands-on with Redis, Kafka, Docker, Kubernetes

Challenges aren't multiple choice. You drag-and-drop architecture, you order steps, you pick which trade-off you'd make and why.

Built solo on Expo + React Native + Supabase. Apple rejected v1.0 in 17 hours for missing account-deletion (5.1.1(v) — RIP my pride), fixed it with a Supabase Edge Function, and now it's live on both stores. Links in the comments.

Roast invited.