Ever wondered how the future of our gamified paradigm towards learning information security will look like?

Ever had a competitive itch to play against a rival team of players, engaging in a fierce battle over defending and attacking vulnerable virtual machines?

Ever wanted to test your skills, compare them against the best of the industry and target your weak points to bring yourself to the next level?

We have the answer to these questions. Battlegrounds is a real-time game of strategy and hacking, where two teams of 1, 2 or 4 people each battle for supremacy over the environment. The first truly multiplayer experience brought to you by Hack The Box.

The only thing you will need to prepare is a virtual machine with Parrot Security OS deployed on it, from where you will download your Battlegrounds OpenVPN pack.

To play, navigate to the Battlegrounds page, and you'll be met with the lobby screen.

The lobby screen contains all the pre-game controls, settings, chat lobbies, and game-mode selections. From this screen, you can organize your team, add them to the lobby with you and start your game with the preferred game mode.

At the bottom right, you have your team line-up. To team up with different players, you will need to have Followed them on the platform. To do so, click a chat member's name and click the Follow user option.

You will be met with a confirmation popup at the top right of your screen.

You can also do so with any platform member as long as you visit their profile page and click the Follow button.

Once both of you have followed each other, you can form a team.

If you're already a part of an older team, you will need to leave it manually to be allowed to invite a friend and form a new team. To do so, navigate to the Party Settings submenu and click on the Leave Party button.

Now, you can proceed with adding your friends. Click the right-most button on the Battlegrounds Party line-up, and you should see all of your Followed friends there.

If, after the game, you decide that you don't want to be friends with them anymore, you can always kick them from the party by clicking on their profile picture in the Battlegrounds Party line-up. Just like in real life.

We embellish the experience of our members with realistic scenarios.

If you end up having no online friends to play with, fear not.

Even if your team is partially full or if you're the only one online, you can proceed with playing, as our Matchmaking System will take care of the rest. Matching with a partially empty team will assign you and other players looking to team up together on a first-come, first-served basis.

The right side of the page also contains detailed information about the two game modes. Click one of their tabs at the top or on their respective How to Play buttons to see the rules that apply to that specific mode.

It's always a good idea to read this if you're a first-timer in Battlegrounds before you jump in.