A cell grows in the incubator dish on the left and
gathers peons for as long as it is left there. Drag it onto open ground
whenever you want it: early is a fast, thin start, late is a slow, heavy
one. The dish will hand you three cells for the whole game
and the three pips under it are how many are left, so where they go is
the shape of your opening.
Growing germs
The dish cultures a cell and a germ at the same
time, and the two tabs above it pick which one your hand picks up.
Switching costs nothing: both keep growing either way. A germ ripens in
thirteen seconds and can be planted at any point along the way, half
grown to finish on the plate or ripe to wake almost at once. Germs are
not limited to three, because a germ is not yours: it attacks the nearest
cell that is not its own and yours counts, so plant it next to somebody
else.
Send
Drag from a cell you hold onto any other cell. Nothing is
out of range. Peons walk at about an eighth of the dish a second, so a
crossing takes several seconds and can be met on the way.
How much
The ring around the pointer is the share each send
takes, a quarter to all of it. Scroll the wheel or press 1 to 4. It stays
where it is put.
Pick
Click a cell you hold to pick it. Shift-click or press A
for every cell, ctrl-click to add or drop one, drag a box for several.
With cells picked, clicking anything sends at it. Click bare ground to
clear the pick.
Fighting
Every peon is a unit on the substrate. Two colonies
that meet in the open kill each other on contact, whoever they were sent
at, so a march that cuts across somebody else's costs you both. Peons
that reach a cell hit its garrison one at a time.
The green goo
Rivers and lakes of toxin, laid when the dish is
poured and fixed for the whole game. Anything that walks into it dies
immediately, and nothing can be sent through it. A cell behind a river is
a cell nobody can rush, which cuts both ways: to get at the far side of
one, take a cell that already sees round it and send from there. The apps
do exactly that, so a river is cover rather than a wall.
Walls
50 peons. Grows a shell around the cell that soaks 25
damage before the garrison takes any, and grows back ten seconds after
the last hit. 100 more doubles it to 50.
Peon farm
50 peons. The cell produces a quarter faster and
holds a quarter more before it fills up. 100 more makes both a half.
Worth most on a rich cell behind the line.
Palisade
50 peons. One attacker in five dies on the way in.
100 more kills two in five.
Toxin
50 peons. Peons sent from this cell hit 15 percent harder,
and carry that with them even if the cell falls behind them. 100 more
makes it 30 percent.
Where the buttons are
Hover a cell you hold. What it can buy is
set out on a ring around it, and each button leaves the ring once it is
bought. A dot on a button means it is the second helping.
Bud
150 peons splits a cell in two and shares what is left
between them. It is what to do with a cell sitting at its ceiling.
Blooms
Pale gold patches drift across the dish. Cells under one
produce much faster while it passes.
Contamination
Moss coloured germs also settle on their own,
grow for sixteen seconds, then throw everything they have at the nearest
cell they can walk to, waking with 30 peons plus a quarter of whatever
they are about to hit. Hit one while it is still growing and it bursts
rather than changing hands.
Mycelium
Contamination that holds two cells spends 30 peons to
grow a filament between them, and every filament into a cell raises what
that cell produces by 15 percent. It can keep going: four cells joined up
is a mould producing half again as much as it should, and it compounds
with its farms. Filaments cannot cross the goo, and taking either end
kills every one attached to it. Left alone in a corner, this is how
contamination stops being a nuisance and becomes the reason a plate is
lost.
Supply line
Ctrl-drag from one of your cells to another. Peons
walk it on their own until one end changes hands. Ctrl-click along it to
cut it.
The projects
The stained cells are the six sites, named around
the outside of the dish. The button under a name opens that site, for as
long as its project still holds its cell. Lose the cell and the name
crumbles.