Hiring Last Boss

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  Home Page

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  Tutorial/How To Play Page

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  Game Page

Inspiration

Practicing for interviews is usually boring and stressful. Reading lists of common questions does not actually prepare you for the pressure of a real interview. It also ignores the specific job you are trying to get. We wanted to fix this by turning the whole process into a game. We asked ourselves what would happen if an interview felt like an RPG boss battle instead of a scary interrogation. That idea became Hiring Last Boss. It is a project that makes interview practice fun and highly specific to your target job.

What it does

Hiring Last Boss is an interview simulator that feels like a turn-based video game. It works for any career path, including tech, sales, nursing, and teaching.

• RPG Battles: You and the boss both start with 100 HP. The boss attacks by asking questions related to the job description.
• Action Menu: You can choose your move. You can give a standard Answer, use a STAR Strike for behavioral questions, Clarify the question, or drink Coffee for a hint.
• Damage System: You deal damage by giving specific and structured answers. If you give a bad answer or use too much fluff, the boss gets a free counter attack.
• Feedback: After the game ends, you get grading notes on your clarity, confidence, depth, and relevance to the job.

How we built it

• Frontend: We built the site using Next.js 16 (App Router) and React 19 in TypeScript. We styled the battle screen to look like a retro 16-bit video game using Tailwind CSS v4 no UI component library. The pixel art is hand-drawn: characters are 16×16 sprite maps rendered as inline SVG, icons are 12×12 grids, the chunky borders are stacked CSS box-shadows, and the 8-bit sound effects are synthesised at runtime with the Web Audio API. Type is Press Start 2P and VT323 via next/font. The whole UI is responsive down to 320px.
• Game Logic: We used the Groq API (groq-sdk, running openai/gpt-oss-120b) to run the game chosen for its very low latency, which keeps a turn-based battle feeling snappy. The AI reads the job description, builds the boss persona, asks context-aware questions, and scores the user's answers on clarity, confidence, depth and relevance to calculate damage. It also generates multiple-choice quickfire rounds every third question. All scoring is clamped server-side so the model can never invent a one-shot kill.
• Backend: We used Next.js Route Handlers (two stateless API endpoints on the Node runtime), deployed on Vercel. There is no database game state lives entirely in the client (React state, with setup passed between screens via sessionStorage), which means unlimited concurrent players with zero shared server state. The API key stays server-side, and both endpoints are rate limited per IP to protect the quota.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest hurdle was balancing the damage points. We had to write very specific prompts so the AI could accurately judge if an answer was actually good or just fluff. We wanted the game to be hard but fair.

Latency was another big issue. Waiting too long for the AI to process an answer ruins the fun of a battle. We had to optimize our API calls to keep the game moving quickly.

What are the main features?

• JD-Driven Opponents: The AI dynamically crafts the hiring manager persona and questions based entirely on the pasted job description.
• RPG Battle System: 100 HP health bars, damage calculation based on answer quality, and penalty mechanics for fluff.
• Strategic Action Menu: Users can choose how to play their turn: standard Answer, STAR Strike (for behavioral structure), Clarify (to ask questions), or use Coffee (to get a hint).
• Comprehensive Analytics: Detailed post-battle coaching notes grading the user's clarity, depth, and relevance.
• Universal Applicability: Built for any field, nursing, teaching, sales, trades, or tech.

Who is it built for?

It is built for job seekers across all industries who are tired of standard mirror-practice and want to pressure-test their interview skills in a dynamic, feedback-rich environment. Whether they are a junior developer, a retail manager, or a registered nurse, HLB adapts to their specific career path.

What's next for Hiring Last Boss

We have big plans for the next version of HLB:

• Voice Integration: Allowing users to actually speak their answers into their microphone for a more realistic interview simulation.
• Campaign Mode: A progression system where you fight your way up the corporate ladder, facing increasingly difficult recruiters, technical leads, and finally, the CEO.
• User Accounts & Match History: Allowing players to save their coaching notes, track their win/loss record, and watch their interview skills level up over time.

Built With

• groq
• next.js