Wipe Day In development

Run the host. Survive wipe night.

A first-person sim about running a game-server host out of your family's garage.

See how it plays Wishlist on Steam Soon
The garage in Wipe Day: two open racks cabled in blue, a desk with a laptop, a wall monitor showing players online, and a yellow sign saying caution, mind the cables.
Next wipe night
First Thursday, 19:00The in-game wipe schedule, not a release date
Garage
Online, for now
Location
A garage in a South African suburb
Power
230 V, an inverter and a tired battery

The game systems

Run your own game-server host, one cable at a time.

A switch and a patch panel in the rack, every port wired with blue cable. Build your rack The wall monitor in the garage showing 1,646 players online and an alert: can't reach the machine. Host communities The garage in the dark during a power cut, the racks lit only by their LEDs. Survive wipe night

Games on the racks

Communities on games you'll recognise. Every one of them is a parody.

  • CrustCrust no one.
  • MinedraftDig. Build. Pour.
  • BARKSurvival Devolved
  • Counter-Stroke 2Plant. Defuse. Repeat.
  • PawlworldCatch. Build. Deploy.
  • 7 Days to DyeThe blood moon rises every seventh night
  • SIXMYour city. Your story.
  • SquidSeed the server. Hold the line.
  • ValhomeA quiet little afterlife
  • DayZzzStay awake
  • Conan ExhalesSurvive the purge
  • EnshreddedShred the shroud
  • Project ZomboydThis is how you logged off
  • Barry's ModNo rules. Only physics.

Poster art from the game. They hang on the garage wall once you've bought them.

Wipe night

Once a month Facepinch forces a wipe and every server fills at once. That night you find and fix what breaks, live, while the owners message you. In the morning they decide whether to stay.

  1. Pre-flightSpares on the shelf, battery charged, tonight's cut schedule checked.
  2. The lullOwners post their wipe announcements. Queues form.
  3. The wipeEvery Crust server wipes. The update lands. Something breaks.
  4. The surgeMain threads saturate, slot requests pile up, the first attack.
  5. The houseKettles, the TV, a power cut, the inverter at its limit.
  6. The long tailA disk that's been running hot. The hotfix. Restores.
  7. Wind-downFans spin down. Crickets. All green, if you earned it.
The wall monitor at 20:37 on wipe night: no players, fibre line down, on battery.
20:37, wipe night. The fibre line's down and the garage is on battery.

Everything by hand

Real hardware, real power, real network. It's a sim, not an arcade game.

The front of rack A: a switch with its ports wired in blue, servers stacked below.

Rack it and cable it

Servers have their network ports, BMC port and power supplies at the back. Network gear has its ports at the front. Connectors and speeds are real, and so are the two rack PDUs.

  • Copper and fibre
  • PDUs A and B
  • Bonded links
  • Labels and patch panels
The workbench with a laptop, a desk lamp, tools on a pegboard and mugs.

Build it on the bench

Buy a chassis new, lease it, or haggle one off Gumtrie and inspect it before you pay. Fit the board, CPU, memory and supplies yourself, then see if it POSTs.

  • Chassis to POST
  • Second-hand lots
  • Thermal camera
  • Clamp meter
The inverter's display in the dark: battery at 97 percent, load 2.6 kilowatts.

Keep the power on

Readings come in W, kW, kWh, V and A. ShedSePush tells you tomorrow's cut times; the inverter, the battery and which socket you plug the fibre box into decide how the night goes.

  • Load-shedding stages
  • Inverter and battery
  • UPS
  • Solar or a generator
The morning-after screen: what went wrong last night, what the owners decided, what actually happened, and the money.

Read the morning after

The owners decide, reviews post, and the game traces what happened back to the choices you made, including what went right: the UPS that kept a world intact gets named.

  • Cause chain
  • Owners' verdicts
  • Reviews
  • The money

Pick your plan

A career, month by month. Each stage brings new ways for things to break.

  1. Moving in

    Month 1
    • The flawed starting garage
    • 12 communities
    • Facepinch's trial

    Breaks: power circuits, the main thread, BMCs

  2. Settling

    Months 2 to 4
    • Rack A tidy, rack B started
    • A second switch
    • Maybe a UPS

    Breaks: load-shedding, heat, the first Gumtrie lemon

  3. Growing

    Months 5 to 8
    • Two racks, 20 to 28 communities
    • A firewall
    • Solar or a generator, staff

    Breaks: the router's packet limit, the PDU feeds, the neighbour

  4. Serious

    Months 9 to 14
    • Three racks, junk corner cleared
    • 30+ communities
    • A studio contract or two

    Breaks: the 32 A supply, one trench for both fibre lines

  5. The goal

    The office

    When you're ready
    • Sign the lease on Unit 4
    • A real office, out of the garage

    Or keep going in the garage.

Rated by the people you host

Their words, from the game. What they write depends on how wipe night went.

  • best host. vitalz never lagged on wipe. 40k happy ppl

    Kade Vitalz Main, Crust

  • Marvellous host!! Always answers and never fusses :)

    Dave Dave's PvE Paradise, Crust

  • Thank you so much. The children are happy and their castle is safe.

    Lerato BlockParty SMP, Minedraft

  • Lekker host. We had load shedding and they stayed up. Sharp.

    Tumi Lazy Sundays 2x, Crust

  • BEST HOST. BLOODBATH SURVIVED EVERY ATTACK. 5 STARS.

    Rexx Bloodbath 10x, Crust

  • Cheers pal, rock solid. Not a single freeze. Tea's on me.

    Big Pete Dino Dads Cluster, BARK

Status

Wipe Day is in development. Here's where it stands, without dates we can't promise.

  • The garage, in first personBuilt
  • Wipe nights and the morning afterBuilt
  • The career, to the office leaseBuilt
  • Balance and polishIn progress
  • Steam pageComing
  • Public playtestsNot open yet

Questions

Can I play it yet?

Not yet. Playtests aren't open. When they are, they'll be announced on this page first.

Will it be on Steam?

That's the plan. The store page isn't up yet, so there's nothing to wishlist today. The button above will work once it is.

How realistic is the hardware?

As close as we can make it. Ports, connectors and link speeds are real, power is read in W, kW, kWh, V and A, and the specs follow real parts. The CPU names are parodies.

Do I need to know networking?

No. The game starts you in a small garage and teaches as you go. If you do know it, good practice pays off on wipe night.

Are those real games?

No. Crust, Minedraft, BARK and the rest are parodies, so you'll know what kind of server each one needs.