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The Walkthrough

Jump to zone:

01

Starting Zone

02

Fungal Zone

03

High Oxygen Zone

04

The Chamber

Welcome to the walkthrough for Atlas Vegrandis. This is the plan for the current state of the game, which will take players through the construction of biological structures and organelles. This walkthrough uses the concept art and links to unlicensed audio to communicate the feel of the game. The walkthrough is subject to change.

<preamble>

​

You’re an Endonaut. A scientist who pilots an organic nanobot that can power itself with the same fuel that powers life: ATP. If you run out of ATP, your bot will completely power down. You can drop a new bot at a landing zone, and scrap your previous bot for materials, if you can reach it. You can build cellular structures that you can enter to help navigate the environment. When entering a cell structure, you can move in any direction as though you’re swimming in it; the walls are translucent so you can stay oriented.

 

With enough power, the bot can change its size as (requires a lot of power the first time because it has to develop the plan to reconfigure itself; doing it after that is less expensive).

​

Getting bigger is really useful, because you can store more stuff (stuff is stored in vesicles, one type of thing per vesicle); start with maybe 10 vesicle capacity, build up to something like 50? Vesicles have a maximum “carryable” size, which also increases as you get bigger (since vesicle size is a continuous variable that the player controls).

 

Larger vesicles will decay over time and need to be repaired (unless you wrap them in a cell wall). Cell size limit starts small, and is increased by nucleus, microtubules, centrosome, channels, amount of ATP production, and each organelle that you deploy in the cell. These structures will require more advanced amino acids, which are available only in the Fungal Zone and beyond.

​

Part of the flow of the game is controlled by making structures and craftable items out of more advanced amino acids, which are only found in certain zones. To build anything in those zones, you have to have the tech to do it.

 

Another flow control is power. You’re really limited in the amount of power that you can generate, and will have to build and upgrade structures to get there (which, themselves, require advanced amino acids).

 

You have a scanner (to gather information, appears as thermal vision (only living things will produce heat), can be switched into “sequence read/write” mode to get the sequence of a molecule or to build one from a sequence) and a bioreactor (to make things, it has a built in water tank to react certain things in, so you can make a wet reaction or a dry reaction).

 

Living structures are too large and strong for you to harvest materials from at this stage, but there are dead cells/dead tissue in the environment that you can harvest from.

​

</preamble>

Starting Zone

Trigger: Repair a cell or large vesicle

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Alternate Trigger: One cellular structure fully disintegrates

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Alternate Trigger: Scan nearby structures (reveals glucose, glucosamine, and muramic acid in recipe sheet). AI narrative subplot: trying to understand what all these sugars (and sugar acids) are being used for.

​

Alternate Trigger: Combine the right ingredients in the bioreactor yourself

​

  1. Find fragments of Cell Wall, scan for Cell Wall recipe

    • Many fragments are near fungal zone​

  2. Task item: craft or find source of glucose

  3. Task item: craft or find source of glucosamine

  4. Task item: craft or find source of muramic acid

  5. Craft Cell Wall

    • Build enough to wrap a cell in

  6. AI message: In order to build more of these structures, a source of sugars is required

Get a feel for things, learn the basics. This zone has large aqueous bodies to explore, as well as dry land. Most things are harmless, except for the (rare) bacterial species that produce toxins.

  1. Dropped at landing zone

  2. AI suggests that you start scanning your surroundings, tells you the key to do it

  3. When you get near a resource, an on screen prompt to take it appears

  4. Start exploring/scanning/collecting resources (ribose, phosphorus, fatty acids, 3 amino acids are common at this point)

    • Glycine, aspartic acid, glutamine

    • Amino acids are collected in bulk (as just “amino acids”); as you discover more, you gain the ability to extract new kinds of amino acids with every pull

atlasVegrandis4.jpg

Start mini task: ATP (~15-20 min.)

Trigger: Spend 5 minutes in game

  1. Get HUD notification that ATP stockpile is at half, will have to find a new source or make your own (draws attention to HUD ATP meter)

    • Task item: find source of phosphorus

    • Task item: find source of oxygen

    • Task item: synthesize phosphate (1 phosphorus + 4 oxygen)

    • Task item: find source of ribose

    • Task item: synthesize adenine (1 phosphate, 3 ATP, in water)

      • adenine is expensive to craft (energetically), but it’s reusable

    • Task item: craft ATP (3 phosphates, 1 adenine)

  2. This is a low yield, laborious way of producing ATP

    • When an ATP is used, it produces AMP (including in this pathway)

    • HUD indicates that there are ways of producing ATP in large quantities automatically, and that “we” (the player and the AI) should search the area for more details on how to do this

      After you complete each crafted item (phosphate, adenine, ATP), it will automatically populate in your recipe sheet.

End mini task

  1. Your recipe sheet has started you out with the recipe for lipid and for membrane

    • This is not a mini task, so there needs to be some way of drawing attention to the recipe sheet

    • By now, you’ve crafted ATP, though, so you at least know the crafting system, and you’ve probably seen the other entries in the crafting sheet after the game opened it up to show you that it was storing the ATP-related recipes, so curiosity drives this one

  2. Harvest fatty acids

  3. Add phosphorus and fatty acids to the bioreactor (it will automatically use the correct ratio) in the wet chamber

    • Game doesn’t tell you the ratio explicitly for most things, you can figure it out if you want (like Anno 2070), but it does here because this is the starter recipe

  4. Add lipids to your water tank to create membrane

    • If you add fatty acids directly, you will create micelles

  5. Start making vesicles to store your stuff in

    • Triggers ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM

Start mini task: ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM (~20-25 min.)

Trigger: Finish creating a vesicle

  1. AI informs you that you can automate the construction of lipids and even membranes

    • Drops a pin in your map where the remnants of one exist for you to scan

  2. Scan to get recipe

  3. SER requires massive amounts of membrane (100?) and some proteins to build (receptor proteins? what else?)

  4. SER gently lets out vesicles every so often if you keep it supplied with phosphorus and fatty acids (manually)

  5. You’ll have to manually build a protein and manually refill the protein in the SER for it to work

  6. SER has a docking attachment for the nucleus, but you can’t use that yet

  7. You can grab a vesicle and break it down for membrane if you need it

  8. Task item: create a large vesicle to put the entire system in, so that the manufactured membrane doesn’t roll away and you collect it

    • This larger structure will start to decay over time, and will trigger the CELL WALL mini task if you repair it

End mini task

Starting Zone Concept Art 1: Player emerges into an alien world. Basic resources can be found all around, including water in abundance. Other (harmless) cells are also fairly abundant. The player cannot enter other living cells, only the ones that they create.

atlasVegrandis1.jpg

Starting Zone Concept Art 2: The player cannot harvest anything from these cells, though, they’re aren’t big or powerful enough, yet. However, debris from dead cells is fairly abundant on the ground, and the player can harvest a great deal of resources from these.

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Starting Zone Concept Art 3: Harvesting resources from dead tissue. Dead tissue are like random treasure chests in the game, they can have a cache of valuable resources.

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Starting Zone Concept Art 4: Detail of fatty acid cache.

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  1. When the player makes a really big vesicle to put the SER in, they’ll see a little gauge that moves from “carryable” into the middle territory, just shy of “cell” size, while targeting the vesicle.

    1. Curiosity powers the step to make bigger vesicles

  2. Use all of the membrane you collect from the SER to create a cell (a really, really big vesicle)

    • May discover organically as you make your vesicles bigger and bigger manually, to store all the stuff (resources) you’ve accumulated (but note that there’s a size limit to cells)

    • Cell slowly pushes outward, eventually springs a leak, eventually explodes

  3. Trigger: will now need to build Cell Wall to contain the cell and prevent it from exploding

  4. Trigger: add channels to cell to move resources in faster

Start mini task: WALLS (~15-20 min.)

Trigger: Repair a cell or large vesicle

​

Alternate Trigger: One cellular structure fully disintegrates

​

Alternate Trigger: Scan nearby structures (reveals glucose, glucosamine, and muramic acid in recipe sheet). AI narrative subplot: trying to understand what all these sugars (and sugar acids) are being used for.

​

Alternate Trigger: Combine the right ingredients in the bioreactor yourself

​

  1. Find fragments of Cell Wall, scan for Cell Wall recipe

    • Many fragments are near fungal zone​

  2. Task item: craft or find source of glucose

  3. Task item: craft or find source of glucosamine

  4. Task item: craft or find source of muramic acid

  5. Craft Cell Wall

    • Build enough to wrap a cell in

  6. AI message: In order to build more of these structures, a source of sugars is required

End mini task

End mini task

Start mini task: CHANNELS (~20-25 min.)

Trigger: Build a cell

​​

  1. After you build the actual cell and install channels, you can push it around with you, and just roll it over a source of phosphorus or fatty acids instead of manually feeding the SER (or other structures). The raw materials will be ingested into the cytosol and be made available to the SER.

    • Task item: [Find the sequence for channels from the environment]

      • As in Subnautica, there is an analog to “blueprints,” which is “sequences”

      • Sequences need amino acids to build

        • You only start off with three amino acids: glycine, aspartic acid, and glutamine

        • Acquire others by exploring and scanning the environment (by mid game, you’ll have discovered all amino acids)

        • When you discover an amino acid, it gets added to your amino acids sheet, where most are grayed out and you can see how many more you have to go

          • Amino acid sheet includes codon and one letter code on it

      • Simple structures don’t need many, more complex structures need them all

      • Scanning a protein destroys it to get the information about the amino acid (you have to break it down to study it)

      • Tryptophan is the most rare, and cannot be synthesized

    • Channel only needs 5 amino acid types to build, the start ones and [x and y]

  2. Task item: build channels

    • Once you have the sequences from the environment and the raw materials (amino acids), you can construct a channel

    • Building multiple channels lets you intake more stuff at once

    • Building channels is manual at this point

Starting Zone Concept Art 5: A source of phosphorus, but two pathogenic bacteria are also in the area. They will become aggressive towards the player if approached.

atlasVegrandis2.jpg

Starting Zone Concept Art 6: Player has started building their own cellular structures.

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Starting Zone Concept Art 7: Exploring one of the aqueous pools. Bacterial cells float in the water, and a large rotifer eating them. Some fatty acid micelles can be seen off on the right, in yellow.

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Mikrofoto.de-Raedertier_Ptygura_pilula_2.jpg

Starting Zone fauna: rotifers. Aquatic, eats prokaryotes. Top: Detail with mouth. Bottom: Next to prokaryotic cells for scale.

Trigger: Complete ATP mini task​

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  1. Task item: HUD text: “Search for clues to scale up energy production”

  2. Task item: scan green structures (there’s not a lot of them in this zone, but they do stand out)

  3. Task item: build a vesicle near a source of water

  4. Task item: build photosystem II in the membrane (pointing so that it’s filling up the vesicle with protons)

    • Scan elements in the environment to get the sequence

  5. Task item: build ATP synthase, oriented so that it’s using the protons to power the synthase machine

    • Scan elements in the environment to get the sequence

  6. Optional task item: encase the entire thing in another vesicle

    • If you do this, you’ll also want to add a channel to it so that water can get in

    • If you complete this optional task, you will have unlocked “thylakoid membrane” in the tech tree

 

As long as the system has access to sunlight and water, it will make ATP and oxygen for you.

​

Building it again should not be too difficult, now that you have the tech; you only need the raw materials.

Start mini task: SOLAR POWER (~15-20 min.)

End mini task

AI informs player that a reliable source of sugars should be found for walls and other structural support. Seek out an area rich in sugars and establish a base nearby.

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Starting Zone fauna: myxozoans. Aquatic, harmless to player.

Musical Feel

DEVELOPED BY DUMASTAR

Fungal Zone

The Fungal Zone will be the player’s source of sugars for most of the game, including those that can be used to make bacterial cells (though that won’t be useful again until the High Oxygen Zone, where pathogenic bacteria appear).

​

  1. Begin exploring, soon get note that oxygen supplies are at halfway, will need to find a source soon

    • Player can leave the Fungal Zone and go back out to get oxygen

    • Can make the systems back in the Starter Zone, carry with you in vesicles

    • That will get annoying, user may attempt to build a cell with photosynthesis to generate oxygen, but antibiotics will quickly destroy the cell, triggering a large event

Start mini task: EUKARYOGENESIS (~3 hr.; may carry across zones and other tasks)

Trigger: Attempt to build a cellular structure in the Fungal Zone (cinematic: watch the cell wall rupture almost immediately, and the cell will deteriorate faster than usual, sort of deflating)

  1. AI comments about the situation

  2. Task HUD: “Build a sturdier cell that can withstand the antibiotics in the Fungal Zone”

  3. Build a nucleus

    • AI comment: To make a nucleus, you’ll need lots of channels

      • “You can make lots of any protein if you have its RNA sequence and a ribosome. If you already have the protein sequence, you can figure out an RNA sequence. You can automate the system of making proteins this way and quickly scale it up.”

    • Task item: construct guanine

    • Task item: construct uracil

    • Task item: construct cytosine

    • Four out of the five nucleotides in the XNA screen will be filled in, the last grayed out (appears on the DNA screen, not either of the two RNA screens)

      • This screen shows you how nucleotides connect (H-bonds)

    • Once the player has nucleotides, they can make the tRNAs for each amino acid

      • For this, the player enters the XNA designer screen, one of the menus

        • Used for tRNA, mRNA, and DNA designs

      • tRNAs have 3 slots for adding their sequence (anti-codon)

        • AI instructs player to build the tRNA for each of the five amino acids that are required to build channels (regardless of whether they’ve discovered the additional two or not by now), and to see the XNA Screen if they need to know which nucleotides are needed for an amino acid

          • A small animation of the tRNA binding to the codon plays in the XNA screen as confirmation when they get it correct to really drive the point home

        • Between the binding mode of player’s nucleotide sheet and the amino acid sheet (with the codons), player should be able to build the 5 tRNA molecules to construct a channel

        • tRNAs are recyclable

      • Put the three physical nucleotides in the correct order to make the tRNA for a given amino acid

      • Player gets a visual indication of which tRNA after building it (which amino acid they can now use), and the count of that codon notches up by one in the mRNA screen

      • It’s possible to make more than one tRNA for a given amino acid, if desired

        • The more tRNAs that are available, the faster transcription goes

          • Especially true when you start to get lots of genes

      • The game will not let you build tRNAs for amino acids before you discover the amino acid

    • Task item: construct an mRNA that has the right sequence to produce a channel

      • Once you’ve built the 5 tRNAs that are needed, player can start to build the mRNA

      • mRNA is complementary to the tRNAs; the XNA Screen shows which are needed

        • The full sequence will be short, maybe 10 amino acids long or so

        • [This is the only time that you’ll have to manually build the sequence?]

          • mRNAs are not recyclable like tRNAs, they have a short life in which they can be used

    • Task item: craft a ribosome

      • This is the only molecule that’s comprised of both protein and mRNA

      • Have to find several more amino acids to make this

  4. Task item: add a rough ER to the nucleus (add ribosomes to some of the ER)

  5. Task item: Add a smooth ER to the nucleus

  6. Task item: build a cytoskeleton

    • At this point, player can build cellular structures in this area

    • This will let the player provide structure for their cellular creations, instead of blobs

  7. Task item: build a photosystem power and oxygen source

    • Build 3 power sources

    • Build thylakoid to hold them

  8. Build Golgi to route proteins to thylakoid (photosystem proteins (like all proteins) wear out after awhile and need to be broken down by lysosome and rebuilt)

  9. Task item: build a lysosome

End mini task

In this zone you will encounter the first megafauna. Fungi-eating beetles and slugs. The former may actively target the player and try to eat them if seen. The slug will not target the player, but may eat or destroy their bases.

atlasVegrandis17.png

Fungal Zone Concept Art 1: Entering the Fungal Zone. Several types of fungi exist here, all outlandishly large (consider making character even smaller than he is here if he’s about the size of a eukaryotic cell). Some brightly colored, some even glow. Mist is in the air, and there’s very low oxygen (the biome is like being underground in a forest, a little hypoxic). Occasional shafts of light peek down from above (can use for photosynthesis), as well as pooled, standing water. Massive beetles roam here.

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Fungal Zone Concept Art 2: Style for the fungal caves. A shaft of light from above. Where these exist, the player can use photosystem I, like the tiny, glowing structure in the middle of the image.

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Fungal Zone fauna: fungi-eating beetle. The size of an aircraft carrier. Can destroy a player's structures and the player.

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Fungal Zone fauna: banana slug, the size of an RV. Moves very slowly, harvestable trail rich in fatty acids and sugars. Will not harm player, but may destroy their structures.

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Fungal Zone Concept Art 3: Approaching an ambrosia beetle in the fungal caves.

Musical Feel

DEVELOPED BY DUMASTAR

New Game Screens

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XNA Game Menu Screen: tRNA When you mouse over one of the three anticodon spots, a flyout menu lets you pick what to put there (out of those that have been discovered). (Label headings are meant to keep with the 1920’s explorer theme, but these will be changed. UI will have additional improvements.)

DEVELOPED BY DUMASTAR

XNAscreen5-mRNA2.png

XNA Game Menu Screen: mRNA If you’ve discovered an amino acid, it will appear in the list on the right. Mousing over an amino acid that’s been discovered highlights it to add to the sequence next, if you’ve got a tRNA for it. If not, you can pick a different codon that you do have enough of (or go make some tRNAs, if not). If you only have one tRNA, the process will be very slow. The more tRNAs you have, the faster the process. After the first run through, the “Auto populate” button becomes available. It will automatically pull the mRNA sequence from the protein sequence, if there are enough tRNAs. If not, you cannot proceed.

DEVELOPED BY DUMASTAR

Nearing the end of the Fungal Zone.

aa1.jpg

Amino Acids Game Menu Screen: Amino acids discovered by the player appear here, and indicate which are remaining to be discovered.

High Oxygen Zone

Player emerges into a land of fantastically large plant structures. Trees that are so tall the tops cannot be seen, plants the size of large mansions, plenty of water spots, and a bright, sunny sky. Whether they notice it or not, the HUD oxygen meter pins all the way to the top (into the danger zone).

As soon as the player begins, they’ll notice their structures running really fast, to the point that they start breaking. After a minute or so of this, the AI will comment on it, and point out that the structures cannot handle this much oxygen, and are starting to rip apart. This will trigger the ANTIOXIDANTS task.

Start mini task: ANTIOXIDANTS (~5 min.)

Trigger: Spend a minute in the High Oxygen Zone​

​

  1. AI will begin searching the area for solutions

    • Will point you to something in the High Oxygen Zone to scan

      • This object will not spawn until the task initiates

  2. Player will make their way to the spot, scan the object, and get the recipe (sequence) for superoxide dismutase

  3. Player can craft this structure manually, but they’ll need a continuous supply of it because there’s so much oxygen in this zone

  4. Triggers the DNA task

End mini task

Start mini task: DNA (~30-60 min.)

Trigger: Spend a minute in the High Oxygen Zone​

​

  1. AI comments that it will be difficult to do any exploring or make any progress if you have to manually make so much superoxide dismutase, suggests retreating to a safer location to develop an automated system

  2. When the player returns to the Fungal Zone, the AI suggests some modifications to RNA to make it more stable, each of which becomes a subtask:

    • Remove one of the oxygens on RNA

    • Swap out uracil for a more stable base

    • Create a second RNA strand that’s got the exact complement to the first, so that the molecule is even more stable

  3. Create RNA synthase

  4. Add a promoter sequence at the beginning for the RNA synthase to bind to

    • Player is given constitutive promoter (always on) sequence

End mini task

With the DNA system in place and making antioxidants, the player can now explore the High Oxygen Zone freely. The AI suggests expanding power generation, which will require essential amino acids not yet found. These can only be found in the higher foliage in plants.

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High Oxygen Zone Concept Art 1: Emerging from the Fungal Zone into the High Oxygen Zone. The fungal caves are dark and damp (some mushrooms at the border can still be seen). Emerging into the High Oxygen Zone, trees that extend into the heavens can be seen ahead; so tall that the tops cannot be seen, and plants the size of large houses. At this size, even the grass makes it difficult to see much. Everything is green, thriving, and huge. Plenty of sunshine, modest water, though not as close to sunshine as in the starter zone.

oxygen3.png

Start mini task: CYTOSKELETON (~15 min. to collect tech., more to build the needed structures)

Trigger: Player makes it a certain distance into High Oxygen Zone​

​​

Surrounded by large plant structures, the player can scan various species for the sequences of structural proteins: microtubules and actin for cell structure, and cadherins and catenin to link cells together.

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  1. Scan several nearby species to get the sequences for cadherin, catenin, microtubules, and actin

  2. Craft enough of each protein to build a structure that you can ascend to get to the higher foliage

  3. Scan species at the top

End mini task

High Oxygen Zone fauna: Spiders.

multiCellArchitecture.jpg

The player can now upgrade to photosystem I, and build basic mitochondria (these are unlocked automatically when the amino acids are scanned). They are now ready to enter the final area. However, the final area is blocked by plant structures. They player will have to find a way through.

Cell shape when in multicellular context. Cells take their shape in part through their neighboring connections. When all lateral walls (and optionally top/bottom) are adhesive walls, cell takes a more rigid shape when player is building (left cell). If one side is adhesive, the other side is a shapeless blob (right cell).

Start mini task: PATHOGENESIS (~1 hr.)

Trigger: Player upgrades their energy production pipeline​

​​​

The AI indicates the direction of the final zone, but notes that a thick covering of foliage is blocking the way. Suggests returning to base to craft some tools to drill through.

Pathogenic bacteria can attach to plants and secrete toxins to break them down. To get the plans for this, however, the player will have to scan the pathogenic bacteria in the Starter Zone. These turn hostile when the player gets near them to scan (or launches phage attacks).

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  1. AI informs player that the plans for phage have been sent to help them against the pathogenic bacteria; player should collect resources to build many phage, and many prokaryotic structures to produce phage

  2. With enough structures producing phage, the player can engage and neutralize the pathogenic bacteria

    • When the pathogenic bacteria turn hostile, it should not be an easy battle

    • Cells will divide to produce more (slowly), eject toxins, and recruit other nearby pathogenic cells

  3. Once the infectious cells have been defeated, the player can scan the remains for their pili structure plans and toxin plans, as well as harvest resources and scan two more amino acids

  4. While there, the player may also scan the sequence for DNA synthase, which triggers the MITOSIS task

  5. Craft several pathogenic bacteria

  6. Return to the foliage barrier in the High Oxygen Zone and deploy pathogenic bacteria

  7. Scan amino acids

  8. Craft upgrade structures for energy production

End mini task

Musical Feel

Start mini task: MITOSIS (~2-3 hr.)

Trigger: Scan the DNA synthase sequence​

​​​

Alternate Trigger: Reach the next zone without having scanned the DNA synthase sequence, which informs the player that they will need to develop a system for replicating cells, and to scan pathogenic bacteria for clues, since they replicated so much during the confrontation.

​

AI informs player that DNA synthase can duplicate all of their DNA. With this key piece of technology, they can duplicate their entire cellular structures exactly as they are, and gives the player the technology for a centrosome and kinetochore to do this, as well as some kinesins (the kinesins will appear as one of 5 different shapes in the game (the kinesin family), following https://www.cytoskeleton.com/january-newsletter-motor-control-how-kinesins-drive-mitosis). They are used to split the duplicated DNA into two different regions by attaching the kinetochore anchor to the DNA, then reeling it in to the centrosome with the motor protein kinesins. However, the player will have to seek out the centriole tech to seed the centrosomes.

​

  1. Attach a kinetochore to each piece of DNA in the cell

  2. Find the centriole sequence

  3. Pick a cellular structure and build two centrosomes in it, one on either side

  4. Build two centrioles and place one in each of the centrosomes

    • Watch as microtubules reach out in all directions, some will attach to kinetochores

      • Those that don’t will reach the end of the cell and then start to break down

  5. The motor protein kinesins will automatically bind to microtubules that touch a kinetochore

    • For the microtubules that touch kinetochores and are bound by it, the kinesins will grab the payload and start walking it to the centrosome, holding there when they get there

  6. AI informs player that the final piece, a contractile ring, is needed to split the cell in two, and gives the player a general region on the map in which to search for this tech to scan

  7. After the player builds the right, they can place it around the cell

    • Holographic positioning for where it will be when they place it

    • If they place it outside of both of the centrosomes, it will pinch off a little piece of cell into a small vesicle, and nothing else will happen (they’ll have to make another ring to try again

    • If they place it between the two poles, the cell will split

  8. With the cell split, the AI congratulates the player, informing them that they can duplicate cellular structures that are particularly useful in this way

  9. AI suggests that the player automate the system and build a stem cell

    • Triggers STEM CELL task

End mini task

The Chamber

The Chamber

Trigger: Finish MITOSIS task.​

​​

  1. AI directs player to the final area, The Chamber, and informs the player that the final destination is through the small hole in the ceiling

    • If the player tries to grow too large, they will not be able to fit through the hole

  2. Player is instructed to build at least 3 cells on site that can divide (3 stem cells), and use these to climb out of the chamber

    • Player can use one stem cell to create the other two

    • As cells are created by the stem cells, the player can harvest them like any other resource

  3. When the player tries to build their way up, as they did previously, they observe skyrocketing energy costs for building new cells, repair, and maintenance

  4. As the player either 1) repairs a certain number of cells manually, or 2) watches a couple of cells deteriorate to the point of not being useful, the AI suggests a different approach. “It will take too long and require too much energy to build this structure manually. Simply automating cell production with stem cells is not enough, we need to generate massive amounts of energy, meaning we’ll need both the water and the sunlight. We’ll have to use a more creative approach.” AI unlocks the pathway screen

Start mini task: STEM CELL (~10-15 min.)

End mini task

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The Chamber Concept Art 1: A large chamber with small, scattered pools. There is a single hole at the top, through which sunlight penetrates, distant from the pools.

The Chamber

Trigger: Finish STEM CELL task.​

​​

The STEM CELL task terminates and is replaced by DIFFERENTIATION. The player is shown a screen that includes a graphical depiction of a pathway, and a flowchart depiction of it. AI tells the player that, after cell division, the cells will need to differentiate into either root cells to absorb water or green cells to absorb sunlight. This differentiation plan will help them do that.

​

  1. Build a structure that connects the water source with the light source

    • Player will be able to see cells in the light differentiate into green cells, producing lots of energy

    • Player may decide to build multiple tendrils to other pools to speed the growth process

    • Progress is slow at first, but the more cells a player adds, the more energy is created, and the faster growth happens

    • Note that the player is still manually placing blocks (cells) to build their structures

Start mini task: DIFFERENTIATION (~1-2 hr.)

End mini task

chamberRoom.png

The Chamber

Trigger: Finish STEM CELL task.​

​​

The player can choose to optionally pursue the task of crafting lysosomes as well. This will boost construction substantially.

  • Player is instructed to scan a nearby structure for the lysosome technology

  • Add 5 lysosomes to each stem cell

    • When added to stem cells, lysosomes give a 500% reduction in energy and raw materials required by recycling biomolecules after they break down

Start mini task: LYSE LYSE LYSE (20 min.)

End mini task

The Chamber

Trigger: Reach 50% height in DIFFERENTIATION task.​

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While building, the player will notice bacteria in the pools, and some of their cells dying in the pools. The bacteria there are pathogenic. They cannot be avoided, since this is the only source of water for a very long distance. The more that they break down the player’s cells, the more populous they become. Combating and destroying them gives a growth bonus.

This task is optional. The player can choose to just deal with the hit to growth, or make prokaryotic cells to combat them with phage (although this is more labor intensive). The pathogenic bacteria produce phage. These can be engulfed by the root cells, but nothing happens. The phage are blocked at the nucleus and cannot reproduce. Using prokaryotic cells, however, will be vulnerable to the phage.

  • Upgrade lysosomes to phagosomes

    • Add lots of membrane for mass

    • Add more enzymes

  • Add 3 phagosomes to each root cells in the water

    • Player may want to build a stem cell dedicated to making these

    • This is an example of using a cellular “factory” to produce something

Cells with the phagosome property will engulf and destroy bacteria that attempt to attach to them. Completing this task eliminates the pathogenic bacteria threat, which is a drain of about 10% at start, grows to about 50% if left unchecked.

Start mini task: PHAGOSOME (20 min.)

End mini task

New Game Screens

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Simple development plan: This system is used to tell a cell to be a root cell or a stem/leaf cell (root by default). May or may not be shown to player, but players are given this system, and can use this to design their own cell types, using the inputs that the cell gets, tags to migrate to different areas of the cells, and their own custom promoter sequences. This is the final level of complexity, and is very advanced. Any time there’s a “no,” that’s the default program. A “yes” from a competing pathway will send an inhibitor to the promotor of the “no” pathway.

The Chamber Concept Art 2: Player will have to build a complex, multicellular structure to connect the resources, requiring lots of energy.

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The Chamber Concept Art 3: Size guide as players structures get bigger.

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The Chamber fauna: Pathogenic bacteria. Player is much larger at this point, but these pool-dwelling pathogenic bacteria can infect cellular structures. 

Musical Feel

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https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/minimal=true/track=2315548291/transparent=true/#

Graphical depiction of cell specification system. This is a simplified pathway provided to player when the promoter system is unlocked, corresponding to the above logical view. A better UI is needed, but the general concept is what will be presented to the player: an animatable cell schematic that shows what will happen when their custom protein is made. In this case, the schematic depicts the following: under normal conditions, a protein is made that binds to the promoter of photosystem II, which prevents it from being transcribed (an inhibitor). If there is sunlight, a second messenger is released from the binding of photosystem II, which releases it to migrate to the nucleus, where it binds to the inhibitor (inhibits the inhibitor), thereby releasing the inhibitory effect, which creates more photosystem II. This means that the cells will maintain a low level of photosystem II (if there is none to bind the second messenger, then photosystem II will be made). But if there’s no sunlight, very little of it will be made. If there’s sunlight, lots of it will be made, and will start to accumulate in the thylakoid membranes, if they exist.

Sandbox

Having built a structure that emerges through the hole, allowing the player to reach the final zone, the player reaches the Sandbox Zone. This zone has lots of abundant resources and configurable environmental threats (fauna and bacteria). The AI congratulates the player and opens the Gene Builder. This final piece of technology allows the player to craft their own genes, using any domains they’ve previously discovered. The Gene Builder has several domains that are missing, which the player can find by exploring in the game world (both in the sandbox and in all of the previous zones) and scanning.

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As part of the Gene Builder, they can also now craft their own localization sequences that the golgi will use to route them to the appropriate location.

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Finally, the player is also given a megastructure: the xylem. This enormous structure template is useful for building incredibly large structures (moves water up high).

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Gene Builder: When a player scans structures in the environment, their sequences ends up in their list of proteins. There are a few Easter egg sequences in the game, like a GFP analog (from the cave fungi). You can attach this sequence to proteins to watch them get moved through the cell, or just for a green ambiance. Note that attaching something to something else in many cases has no effect (or just breaks the whole thing). Like targeting a channel to a membrane, but which is also attached to a Complex II, there’s no effect. Just a waste of resources. The example shown here binds to ATP and moves it out of the nucleus, lowering the amount of energy available in the nucleus. In this way, players can build more complex cells.

Arid Zone

The Arid Zone surrounds the map. It is a vast desert, with occasional predators that are hostile to the player. This zone serves as a boundary to the game.

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Arid Zone fauna: Ants. Will swarm if they detect the player or structures, making them incredibly difficult to kill. Fleeing is the only realistic option. Player can infect their colony with pathogenic bacteria that they craft, if they’re sneaky enough (leave it on a food source for them, but the bacteria have to have division capabilities, and pili for pathogenesis, as well as some toxin).

aridZone
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Arid Zone fauna: Tardigrade. The size of a car (large SUV). Highly resistant to everything, nearly indestructable. Can eat player structures.

Musical Feel

DEVELOPED BY DUMASTAR

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