The Cell Must Grow

In The Cell Must Grow, you are in charge of managing a biological cell ! As a cell, your goal is to stay alive as long as possible and grow as much as possible.

To do you so, you will need to absorb surrounding nutrients, produce more DNA tokens which can then be used to unlock new molecular mechanisms and grow by making your membrane bigger. But beware, the outside world is finite and as all living things die, you will have to fight the damages of time. Both the membrane of the cell and its content will decay.

How to play

To play the game, simply execute `TheCellMustGrow.exe`.

As a player you can only interact with the panel on the left side of screen. Left click on the different recipes of the panel to turn purple DNA tokens into DNA recipes that are then used by the ribosome to create cellular parts. Recipes need to be unlocked first, which can be done using the number of DNA tokens indicated on the recipe

Key binding and controls

- Scrolling wheel to zoom in and out

- W, A, S, D keys to move the camera around

- A and E keys to slow down and speed up time

- Space bar to center the camera on the cell

- Esc to exit the game (Warning: there is no save system implemented in the game).

Tips

- If you hover on a element of the cell, you will see its remaining lifespan.

- Active channels (using energy) are much better than passive channels.

- You will need the large ribosome to build advanced cell parts.

- A good starting strategy is: passive blue channel x2, unlock passive green channel, passive green channel x1, unlock membrane expender, membrane expender x1.

About the game

The Cell Must Grow is a game prototype for biology nerds made during a 3 months period (120 hours of effective work). In this game I used concepts from my own work experiences in molecular dynamics and computational biology.