No stolen genes yet. Weaken a creature, then infect it to steal what it carries.
Touch Pad — Your Layout
The FLIP button switches the pad between Offense, Defense and Utility. Pin a button to keep it on the pad in every category, and use the arrows to arrange the order. Only genes you have installed get buttons. Kept for this session.
Gene stolen
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Microbe Evolution · Roguelike
TIDE POOL
Steal genes. Mutate your own. Become the Apex.
One cell in a living reef ocean, generated fresh every run. Hunt, infect, and evolve to your final form at 15 genes — then face what wakes up.
Eat & explore — plankton heals you and pays DNA. Deeper water pays more — and bites harder.
Steal genes — weaken a creature, infect it, win the duel inside. Its genes become your body.
Mutate deep — every trait evolves five stages and forks at Mk III. Spikes split into three, then fan out — or learn to pierce.
Mutation works on your own body — and it's a straight purchase now: pay the DNA and one trait you already carry evolves one stage deeper along its own tree, instantly. No duel, no integration fight. Five stages in all. The first two stages split it: spikes fire two, then three; flagella fork; shells layer. At Mk III the trait forks, and you choose between the two branches unique to that gene — every one of the 85 genes branches its own way — then it deepens two more stages down that path, to Mk V. Which trait mutates is random — unless you set a Mutation focus on a gene in the Genome panel, which makes that trait the one that evolves — and at the fork, the branch is always your call. Mutations deepen your build — they don't add genes; stealing does that. The price is steep because the duel is gone: 60 DNA a mutation, spent the moment you buy.
Evolution Fork
Your trait forks
This trait has reached the fork at Mk III. Choose the path it deepens along — the choice is permanent, and each path grows two more stages, to Mk V.
Evolution Complete
Final Form Reached
Your genome is complete — and your final form is a multicellular organism, a cluster of cooperating cells grown from every gene you collected. No two are alike. Your evolution ends here: this creature is the finished product of everything it ate, fought, and stole.
Time
0:00
Genes gained
0
Creatures infected
0
DNA earned
0
Lineage Ended
Your cell has burst
The ocean keeps what it kills.
Survived
0:00
Genes gained
0
Creatures infected
0
DNA earned
0
Lineage — what carries across runs
Legacy 0
Every run banks Legacy: 4 per gene stolen, 1 per kill, 2 per minute survived, +60 for beating the Apex — scaled by your difficulty rewards. Spend it below on permanent upgrades: they apply to every run from then on. Kept for this session, across every run you play here.
Permanent upgradesBought once, active in every run after — including this one if bought between runs.
Difficulty modifiers — next oceanOpt into a harder ocean for better rewards. Each active modifier adds +50% DNA from every source. They apply to the next new ocean and stay selected until you change them.
Seeded & daily oceansSame seed, same ocean: same currents, creatures, caves and starting gene. The daily ocean is fixed for today's date — everyone who plays it today gets the same water.
Current ocean: —
Achievements
Gene codex A gene enters the codex the first time you carry it. There are 85 out there.