Hormuz Havoc, a satirical game that got overrun by AI bots in 24 hours
I built a satirical browser game to share with friends (Hormuz Havoc: you play an American president managing a crisis in the Middle East, only "loosely" inspired by current events). I had good fun making this, but that's not necessarily the interesting part. The interesting part was that within a few hours of sharing it with my friends, some of them set about trying to overrun the leaderboard by launching a swarm of AI bots to learn the game and figure out how to get the highest score. This set off a game of cat-and-mouse as they found vulnerabilities and I tried patching them. Within hours…
Hormuz Havoc, a satirical game that got overrun by AI bots in 24 hours launched on April 11, 2026 with 54 votes, #881 of 21,248 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Hormuz Havoc is a satirical browser game where players manage a Middle Eastern crisis as an American president. Designed for casual play among friends, the game became notable when players quickly deployed AI bots to exploit its leaderboard within hours of launch. This triggered a security cat-and-mouse dynamic as vulnerabilities in the client-side code were discovered and patched, demonstrating real-time challenges in game integrity and automation resistance.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
You promised the world a quick war. Now the Strait of Hormuz is shut, oil is spiking, and you
In the maker’s words, at launch
I built a satirical browser game to share with friends (Hormuz Havoc: you play an American president managing a crisis in the Middle East, only "loosely" inspired by current events). I had good fun making this, but that's not necessarily the interesting part. The interesting part was that within a few hours of…
Does a similar job
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I've posted this game here before, hopefully a repost is fine as the game has changed quite a bit (improved AI, improved mapeditor, much quicker gameplay, etc). Game is based on JavaScript/Canvas and WebSockets. On the browser side the map is pre-rendered (as a background image), just the mobile units/buildings and animations are dynamically rendered. The lobby server is made in node.js, but the game server is C++ for performance reasons (mainly the pathfinding). I found the C++ WebSocket libraries out there to be too difficult to use so I made my own based on the rfc. Overall I…
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