In August ch4p from Hack the Box approached me with an offer to build a CTF for the annual Greek capture the flag event called Panoptis. The idea was to build a unique Active Directory lab environment to challenge CTF competitors by exposing them to a simulated real-world penetration test (pretty rare for a CTF). I spent a bit over a month building the first iteration of the lab and thus Offshore was born.
I flew to Athens, Greece for a week to provide on-site support during the lab. Overall the CTF lab was a hit and very well received by the competitors and others involved with the event.
Afterwards, ch4p offered for me to further build out the lab and eventually offer it as a Pro Lab on the main Hack the Box website. I spent another 3 or so months refining elements within the lab, increasing the overall size and difficulty and causing ch4p a lot of stress by asking for more and more storage, ram and virtual networks.