Mycelium

MYCELIUM

a colony sim in the SimAnt tradition, for fungi

You are a fungus. Steer your hyphae through the soil by hand, find roots and buried things to eat, poison the grubs, burn back the rival colony, then push up mushrooms and shed spores to drift onto the next plot. Take the whole garden.

Behind this card a colony is already at it. Watch it find the roots.

The garden

spore bank: 0 🍄

Plot claimed!

How to play

Each plot is a slice of soil seen from the side. Your colony starts at the pulsing white square. The rival starts at the orange one.

Grow

Bright dots on the ends of your threads are tips. They wander, branch, and leave hyphae behind. Growing costs energy.
Attract (A): drag in the soil to lay attractant. Tips steer toward it. Draw a trail to the orange-brown food: dead roots, leaf litter, buried logs.
Lead (S): hold and drag and a tip grows from your nearest hyphae straight toward the pointer. It is the one you drive yourself, like the ant you controlled in SimAnt. It is strong in a fight and goes exactly where you point.
Surge (D, 60 energy): eight fresh tips burst out from your network near the click. Retract (R): pull hyphae back from a spot for a little energy, or to cut a grub off.
Living roots never run out: connect to one for steady energy. Something glints now and then where a buried surprise waits: seeds, bones, spore prints, the odd coin.
Hyphae on food pull energy back along the network. Cut-off threads turn grey and wither, so keep the network whole.
Dry soil (pale) slows growth and kills threads. Rain soaks the topsoil; water pockets keep the deep soil wet. Rock is impassable; clay is slow.

Allocate

The triangle splits your effort. Grow gives more tips. Defend makes toxins (a purple stain) that hurt the rival and grubs on contact. Fruit pushes mushrooms up where your network touches the surface.

Fruit and spread

Grown mushrooms shed spores for a while, then wilt. Spores are your breeders: they drift to the rest of the garden. Fruit (G, 80 energy) grows one on demand where your network touches the surface.
Each plot has goals that pay out spores when you hit them.
Shed the target number of spores on a plot, or wipe out the rival, to claim it. On the garden map, spend banked spores to drift onto a plot next to one you hold. Spores count even if you lose the plot.

Threats

The rival grows toward the same food and eats into your threads where you meet. Density and toxins decide fights.
Each colony has a core (the pulsing square) with five hearts. Reach the rival's with dense, toxic hyphae to consume it and win the plot outright. Guard your own.
Grubs chew through anything. Slugs climb out at night and in rain to eat your mushrooms. Toxins kill both, a dead one is food. Click a grub or slug (or use Toxin, F, 45 energy) to drop a toxin burst on it; the burst also burns rival hyphae.
The gardener occasionally digs. Nothing survives a spade.

Keys: A attract · S lead · D surge · F toxin · G fruit · R retract · E erase · space pause · 1 2 3 speed · right-click or shift-drag erases · H this screen