How to Play

You're a researcher cultivating extremophile bacteria. Each environment has different demands — heat, cold, radiation, toxicity, pressure, and nutrient scarcity.

Each generation, your bacteria mutate. Some mutants are better adapted, some worse. Select the most promising strains to survive into the next generation.

Each gene has a metabolic cost. If total costs exceed available nutrients, your bacteria starve. In harsh environments, lean is better than loaded.

When your colony is thriving, the experiment moves to a new, harder environment. You pick which strains to carry forward — choose wisely.

If every strain goes extinct in a single generation, your research program is over.