Lucy Han, Anushka Heda

Beginner Track

NETWORK ODYSSEY

NETWORK ODYSSEY is a 2D educational networking game built using Phaser.js. The player navigates a data packet through different network environments, learning important networking concepts such as TCP vs UDP, routing, TTL (Time To Live), encapsulation, encryption, and network congestion.

The game visualizes networking principles into an interactive gameplay. Each scene represents a different challenge in real-world internet communication.

This project simulates real networking ideas in a visual and interactive way:

• Scene 1: Basic routing between network nodes (IP addresses and routers)
• Scene 2: Protocol switching (TCP vs UDP behavior differences)
• Scene 3: Encapsulation mechanic (VPN tunneling / packet wrapping)
• Scene 4: Network congestion caused by real-world news events (ex. latency spikes / high-frequency traffic)
• Scene 5: Final routing decision and delivery to destination node

Players learns how packets move through networks, how congestion affects delivery of packets, and how encapsulation and encryption protects the data inside packets.

1. Download or clone the repository
2. Open index.html in a browser OR run with Live Server (VS Code)
3. Play through each scene based on instructions provided.

• Arrow Keys → Move packet (Scene 4)
• Mouse Click → Interact with routers / buttons
• Next Button → Progress between scenes

Networking concepts are often difficult to visualize as real world networks are vast and complex. This project solves that by turning the packet flow, routing decisions, and network conditions into a game. It helps players understand how real world internet traffic behaves under different conditions. Due to our lack of background in game making and Computer Networking, understanding the basics and deciding on the final scenes was one of the many challenges we faced. Additional challeges faced were mostly basic bugs like a broken next button, scene configuration, unclear instructions, and lack of information in gameplay. These challeges were solved throguh teamwork and a lot of debugging.