kubeinvaders (the original) :space_invader: aka k-inv :joystick:

May 10, 2026 · View on GitHub

Gamified Chaos Engineering and Educational Tool for Kubernetes

KubeInvaders game screenshot

This project is recommended by the CNCF and has significant educational value. It is a chaos engineering tool, but it is also used for studying Kubernetes and resilience topics.

It is part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's (CNCF) landscape in the Observability and Analysis - Chaos Engineering section.

Some companies use it for marketing at tech conferences in DevOps & SRE. For example at Decompiled 2025.

Table of Contents

  1. Description
  2. What you will learn
  3. Installation
  4. Example using Podman + MiniKube
  5. URL Monitoring During Chaos Session
  6. Troubleshooting Unknown Namespace
  7. Prometheus Metrics
  8. Community blogs and videos
  9. License

Description

Inspired by the classic Space Invaders game, KubeInvaders offers a playful and engaging way to learn about Kubernetes resilience by stressing a cluster and observing its behavior under pressure. This open-source project, built without relying on any external frameworks, provides a fun and educational experience for developers to explore the limits and strengths of their Kubernetes deployments.

What you will learn

By running chaos experiments with KubeInvaders you can observe the following Kubernetes behaviors directly:

  • Pod lifecycle — how pods are terminated and recreated by their controllers
  • Self-healing — how Deployments and ReplicaSets maintain the desired replica count after pod deletion
  • Scheduling — where Kubernetes places new pods after disruption and why
  • Node pressure — how the cluster reacts when a worker node is attacked or becomes unavailable
  • Namespace isolation — how workloads in different namespaces are affected independently
  • Recovery time — how long the cluster takes to return to a steady state under different configurations

Installation

Helm installation is currently not supported.

The easiest way to run KubeInvaders is directly with Podman or Docker.

Run with Podman:

podman run -p 8080:8080 docker.io/luckysideburn/kubeinvaders:latest

Run with Docker:

docker run --rm -p 8080:8080 docker.io/luckysideburn/kubeinvaders:latest

Then open:

http://localhost:8080

If you want to run KubeInvaders against your own Kubernetes cluster, create the required RBAC components (assumes k8s v1.24+):

cat << 'EOF' | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
  name: kubeinvaders
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: kinv-cr
rules:
  - apiGroups:
      - ""
    resources:
      - pods
      - pods/log
    verbs:
      - delete
  - apiGroups:
      - batch
      - extensions
    resources:
      - jobs
    verbs:
      - get
      - list
      - watch
      - create
      - update
      - patch
      - delete
  - apiGroups:
      - "*"
    resources:
      - "*"
    verbs:
      - get
      - watch
      - list
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  name: kinv-sa
  namespace: kubeinvaders
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: kinv-crb
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: kinv-cr
subjects:
  - kind: ServiceAccount
    name: kinv-sa
    namespace: kubeinvaders
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
type: kubernetes.io/service-account-token
metadata:
  name: kinv-sa-token
  namespace: kubeinvaders
  annotations:
    kubernetes.io/service-account.name: kinv-sa
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  namespace: default
  name: kubevirt-vm-restart-role
rules:
- apiGroups: ["subresources.kubevirt.io"]
  resources: ["virtualmachines/restart"]
  verbs: ["update"]
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: kubevirt-vm-restart-binding
  namespace: default
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: kubeinvaders
  namespace: kubeinvaders
roleRef:
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: kubevirt-vm-restart-role
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
EOF

Extract the token:

TOKEN=$(kubectl get secret -n kubeinvaders -o go-template='{{.data.token | base64decode}}' kinv-sa-token)

Important: Use a valid Kubernetes token. If the token is missing, invalid, or expired, KubeInvaders cannot call the Kubernetes API and game actions will fail.

The example above shows how to extract the token from kinv-sa-token. If you use short-lived tokens, generate a new one when needed:

kubectl create token kinv-sa -n kubeinvaders --duration=8h

Create two namespaces:

kubectl create namespace namespace1
kubectl create namespace namespace2

Example using Podman + MiniKube

Install MiniKube:

minikube start
😄  minikube v1.38.1 on Darwin 26.2 (arm64)
✨  Automatically selected the vfkit driver. Other choices: qemu2, virtualbox, vmware, ssh, podman (experimental)
❗  Starting v1.39.0, minikube will default to "containerd" container runtime. See #21973 for more info.
💿  Downloading VM boot image ...
    > minikube-v1.38.0-arm64.iso....:  65 B / 65 B [---------] 100.00% ? p/s 0s
    > minikube-v1.38.0-arm64.iso:  402.91 MiB / 402.91 MiB  100.00% 13.39 MiB p
👍  Starting "minikube" primary control-plane node in "minikube" cluster
💾  Downloading Kubernetes v1.35.1 preload ...
    > preloaded-images-k8s-v18-v1...:  243.95 MiB / 243.95 MiB  100.00% 14.15 M
🔥  Creating vfkit VM (CPUs=2, Memory=4600MB, Disk=20000MB) ...
🐳  Preparing Kubernetes v1.35.1 on Docker 28.5.2 ...
🔗  Configuring bridge CNI (Container Networking Interface) ...
🔎  Verifying Kubernetes components...
    ▪ Using image gcr.io/k8s-minikube/storage-provisioner:v5
🌟  Enabled addons: storage-provisioner, default-storageclass
❗  /usr/local/bin/kubectl is version 1.30.1, which may have incompatibilities with Kubernetes 1.35.1.
    ▪ Want kubectl v1.35.1? Try 'minikube kubectl -- get pods -A'

Get the MiniKube API server address using one of these commands:

cat ~/.kube/config | grep server | grep $(minikube ip)
    server: https://192.168.64.2:8443

kubectl cluster-info

Kubernetes control plane is running at https://192.168.64.2:8443
CoreDNS is running at https://192.168.64.2:8443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy

Get the MiniKube CA certificate (you will need its content when configuring KubeInvaders):

cat ~/.minikube/ca.crt

Create the namespace, service account, and token:

kubectl create ns kubeinvaders

kubectl create sa kubeinvaders-sa -n kubeinvaders

kubectl create clusterrolebinding kubeinvaders-cluster-admin \
  --clusterrole=cluster-admin \
  --serviceaccount=kubeinvaders:kubeinvaders-sa

kubectl create token kubeinvaders-sa -n kubeinvaders --duration=24h
# outputs: <your-token>

Run KubeInvaders:

podman run -p 8080:8080 --network=host kubeinvaders:latest

If you are on macOS, you may encounter issues due to Podman Machine networking.

URL Monitoring During Chaos Session

During a chaos engineering session, you can monitor the behavior of an HTTP call exposed by an Ingress.

Use the flag "Add HTTP check & Chaos Report" and add the URL to monitor.

URL monitor flag

Follow real-time charts during the experiment.

HTTP stats chart

Troubleshooting Unknown Namespace

  • Check if the namespaces configured in the UI (for example: namespace1, namespace2) exist and contain pods.
  • Check your browser's developer console for any failed HTTP requests (send them to luckysideburn[at]gmail[dot]com or open an issue on this repo).
  • Try using latest_debug and send logs to luckysideburn[at]gmail[dot]com or open an issue on this repo.

Prometheus Metrics

KubeInvaders exposes metrics for Prometheus through the standard endpoint /metrics.

Here is an example of Prometheus configuration:

scrape_configs:
- job_name: kubeinvaders
  static_configs:
  - targets:
    - kubeinvaders.kubeinvaders.svc.cluster.local:8080

Example of metrics:

MetricDescription
chaos_jobs_node_count{node=workernode01}Total number of chaos jobs executed per node
chaos_node_jobs_totalTotal number of chaos jobs executed against all worker nodes
deleted_pods_totalTotal number of deleted pods
deleted_namespace_pods_count{namespace=myawesomenamespace}Total number of deleted pods per namespace

Download Grafana dashboard

Grafana dashboard overview

Grafana metrics detail

Community blogs and videos

Community blog screenshot

License

KubeInvaders is licensed under the Apache 2.0. See LICENSE for the full license text.