NexAgent by Circadence: the network security game, bronze in 2020

NexAgent puts the player in the seat of an agent who investigates everyday network problems and fixes them. The setting is an emulated workplace, and the aim is to teach the foundations of network security. Circadence names three groups as the audience: entry-level cybersecurity staff, IT generalists and career changers who want skills that employers in security look for.

Play moves through three kinds of activity. Simulation droids hand out the tasks. Responsive command-line interfaces let the player hunt for glitches in network configurations. A series of cyber tasks then asks for fixes to the vulnerabilities found. Concepts such as network segmentation, hardening and safety come up along the way.

Athena, a coaching bot inside the game, states the objectives for each task and gives feedback. A Technical Reference Guide defines the cyber terms the player runs into. Players set their own pace, and the design expects them to move on to deeper networking material afterward.

Circadence builds cyber ranges and cybersecurity learning platforms for enterprises, government agencies and academic institutions, and its own description cites a twenty-year history of online gaming and network optimization. The company was founded in 1995 and was based in the Denver area of Colorado when the award was announced. Its approach combines game-based and active learning with artificial intelligence, natural language processing and machine learning.

NexAgent took bronze in the Corporate/Vocational Skills category of the 2020 International Serious Play Awards. Circadence also offers Project Ares, a massively multiplayer online platform where security teams practice against attack scenarios in real time.

Circadence is still active. Its website lists a Boulder, Colorado address and presents AI-powered cyber ranges for enterprise and national-scale cyber readiness. The product menu names RangeGPT, Range Conductor, Project Ares and Security Immersion Workshops.

NexAgent does not appear in that menu, and no separate NexAgent page could be found on the site in November 2026. Whether the game can still be played therefore stays unconfirmed. Project Ares has its own page, which describes hands-on cybersecurity training labs in gamified environments with content aligned to NIST/NICE work roles and with progress tracking for organizations. Its content items simulate security workflows such as threat investigation, incident response and defensive operations.