New
Microbes
A petri dish that evolves while you watch. Sorry in advance.
FreeRuns in your browserNo sign-up
Best on: Desktop or laptop with a mouse
Controls
- Mouse wheel
- Zoom in and out
- Right drag or arrow keys
- Move the view
- Left click
- Select an organism, or use the chosen tool
- Space
- Pause
- Period
- Step while paused
Organisms only make sound when you zoom in on them.
How to play
- Press Play Now, then New dish. The dish starts running by itself.
- Zoom in with the mouse wheel. Far away they are dots. Up close you can see their bodies, eyes, and limbs, and hear them.
- With Inspect selected, click any organism to follow it, and use Show on tree to see where its species came from.
- Pick a tool on the left and paint on the dish to change the water, add food or toxins, or remove organisms.
- Use Fluorescence and Overlay to see traits and chemicals, and speed things up to 10× when you want to see more evolution.
- Your dish saves itself in this browser. Save it to a file to keep it, or share a link to the same starting dish.
About the game
Microbes is an evolution sandbox with no score and no ending. Every organism carries a genome that sets its body, eyes, limbs, diet, and behavior. Children inherit it with mutations, so the dish changes by itself: predators appear, prey gets faster, and cells stick together into colonies.
You are the weather, and occasionally the disaster. Paint hot and cold water, squirt in sugar or antibiotics, fire the Mutagen Ray, or zap whoever annoys you. Then zoom in, pick one organism, and follow its family through the species tree. Optional challenges wait for you if you want a goal.
