Announcing Prophet Labs: Can You Survive 'The Recall Run'?
We talk a lot about the “Regulatory Cliff” and the existential risks facing hardware companies. We write white papers about the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) and analyze supply chain vulnerabilities.
But we realized something: reading about “compliance risk” is boring. Living through it is terrifying.
So we built a simulator to let you experience the terror safely.
Introducing Prophet Labs
Today we are launching Prophet Labs, a new playground for experimental tools and interactive simulations. Our first release is “The Recall Run”, a browser-based survival horror game designed specifically for embedded engineers, CTOs, and product managers.
The Game: “Hardware is Hard”
In The Recall Run, you take on the role of a CTO at a startup launching a new IoT device. Your goal is simple: Keep the product alive for 5 years.
To succeed, you must balance two critical metrics:
- Budget: Money keeps the lights on. If it hits zero, you’re bankrupt.
- Doom (Technical Debt): The “Doom Meter” measures your accumulated risk. If it hits 100%, your product fails catastrophically - usually via a massive recall or regulatory ban.
Powered by Architectural Consequences
Under the hood, The Recall Run isn’t just random chance - it uses a tag-based deck-building engine. Every architectural decision you make adds invisible tags to your device context:
- Buying cheap components? You gain the
[vulnerable_wifi]tag. - Skipping security audits? You gain the
[unencrypted_storage]tag.
The event engine constantly scans these tags. If you have [vulnerable_wifi], the “Botnet Recruitment” disaster isn’t just possible - it’s guaranteed.
Open Source & Community Driven
We decided to make The Recall Run completely Open Source on GitHub.
Why? Because the best horror stories come from those who have lived them. We crowdsource the disasters. Did you live through a specific hardware nightmare - like a certificate expiry on a Friday night or a flash memory corruption issue?
We want your horror stories.
We are actively looking for contributions:
- New Events: Add real-world disasters (it’s just a JSON file!).
- New Devices: Specific IoT horror archetypes.
- Localization: Help us translate the pain into other languages.
Check out the repository at github.com/deviceprophet/hardware-is-hard. PRs are welcome!
The Tech Stack
For the curious, the simulation is built as a high-performance interactive island:
- Core: React 18 + Tailwind CSS
- State: Zustand (for transient timeline updates)
- Privacy: It is a pure client-side simulation. No server, no databases, no tracking cookies. Your failure is private (unless you choose to share it).
Why We Built This
We built The Recall Run to demonstrate a core truth about modern hardware development: Technical decisions are business decisions.
In the game, as in real life, there is rarely a perfect choice. You are constantly trading off Cost, Speed, and Risk.
- If you choose the “Mil-Spec” strategy (High Cost, Low Risk), your CFO will hate you, and you might run out of cash.
- If you choose the “YOLO Deploy” strategy (Zero Cost, High Risk), you will ship fast, but your Doom meter will fill up with generic vulnerabilities.
Eventually, the bill comes due.
Test Your Skills
Can you survive the full 5-year lifecycle? Can you navigate the complexity of GDPR, CRA, PSTI, and FDA compliance without destroying your margins?
Most players fail on their first try. Their device gets bricked by a bad OTA update, or banned by the FCC, or cloned by a competitor. But that’s the point. In the simulation, when you fail, you can just press Restart.
In the real world, you need a better plan.
About Device Prophet
While The Recall Run is a game, the risks it models are real. Device Prophet helps hardware companies navigate this complexity in the real world. Our Expert System analyzes your architecture against 50+ global regulations to predict compliance risks before you build.
If you enjoyed the game but want to reduce the “Doom” in your actual product roadmap, get in touch.