Controls
- W A S D / arrows — run in a direction; let go to tumble (reorient randomly)
- Space — release the loaded enzyme (dissolve the particle ahead) or antibiotic (poison nearby protists)
- X — switch which enzyme/antibiotic is loaded · M — toggle music
- Esc — pause & high scores · ? — this guide
The loop
You can't swim through the big particles, but you can dissolve them with extracellular enzymes — carve a tunnel to the rich core, absorb the freed nutrients, and shelter inside where the big protists can't follow. Eat enough and you elongate and divide; daughters forage on their own and inherit everything you've evolved. Respiration burns energy every second, so keep foraging. Low on energy? You'll form a resistant cyst and wait it out.
Food — three resources
Particles are patchy mixes of lipid, protein and carbohydrate. Each needs its own enzyme, and you start able to digest only carbohydrate (carbohydrase). Locked enzymes show a 🔒 in the HUD.
Gold phages — adaptations 🧬
Chase down the rare gold phage (a star on the minimap, often buried in a particle) to gain a random heritable adaptation: a new enzyme (lipase/protease), higher enzyme expression (bigger reach), chemotaxis (auto-seek food), an antibiotic (an anti-protist toxin — level it up to spread over a wider area), or CRISPR. Adaptations only truly count once you divide and pass them on.
Viruses — phages
They drift, stick to particles, and infect you — but a virus only infects cells at a similar adaptation level to the host it came from, so it's colour-coded to you: red ones can infect your current cell, green ones can't. The catch: every adaptation you take shifts your level, so you can outrun a red swarm by adapting — they turn green — until new phages evolve to catch up. Infected? Divide before it lyses you and the virus goes to one daughter while your lineage stays clean. With CRISPR, the green (immune) viruses become food.
The chart
The graph below the ocean stacks your colony by generation — each colour is a lineage at a given level of adaptation, so a new shade appears each time a lineage adapts and you can watch generations rise and fall (dormant cysts are counted in their generation's band). Lines overlay for protists and viruses. Your run's full story — and where each adaptation happened — is shown when you die.