FunGals 🍄

A cute mycology game for the browser, and the sister game to PetriPals. Pick a fungal gal and eat nutrients to grow your colony, but steer clear of the antifungal disks and their zones of inhibition.

▶ Play FunGals: works on computers, phones and tablets.

How to play

1. Pick a gal. Each one is a real fungus, drawn as a cartoon.
2. Swim around the dish. Use the arrow keys, or on a touch screen, drag your gal like a trackpad: touch anywhere on the dish and slide your finger, and she moves the same way.
3. Eat nutrients to bud. Every cell that eats a nutrient buds: a little daughter cell swells out of her side and grows to full size. Daughters stick together in clusters, the way budding yeast does on a plate. Yara's line up end to end in chains instead.
4. Don't touch the antifungals. Touching a disk, or the clear zone of inhibition around it, ends the game. The zones start small and spread outward over the first few seconds, so grab the nutrients near the disks early. The game-over card's "Did you know?" line then says how that drug works (ANTIFUNGAL_FACTS in public/game/config.js), or shows a fact about your gal if that drug has none; beating a level shows a fact about your gal.

There are seven levels. Each one adds another antifungal disk and doubles the colony you need to grow, from 4 cells up to 256. Each yeast has four or five antifungals, so the later levels start over from her first drugs.

Playing a mold: Fumi

Fumi (Aspergillus fumigatus) plays differently. You're one of her tiny spores, floating over the agar. Land on a nutrient and a spore germinates right there: a colony starts small and spreads out in a circle, white and fluffy with a greenish middle where it's making spores. A colony counts as soon as it starts, and you need 6 colonies on level 1 and 6 more each level, up to 42. Like the yeasts, she has 1 antifungal disk on level 1 and one more each level (drugs repeat once she's had them all). There are only 4 nutrients on her plate at a time (the yeasts get 8), since each one is a whole colony.

Watch out for the disks: a colony that touches an antifungal disk, or its zone of inhibition, pops, the whole colony at once, and you lose it from your count. The colonies keep spreading and the zones keep widening for the first few seconds, so leave room. Your spore touching one is still game over. A nutrient under a colony isn't wasted: new nutrients can turn up under a colony, and a colony can spread over one, and either way it starts a new colony right there.

Penelope, Miri, Ruby, Rosie, Trixie, Velma, Ember, Quinn, Inka, Poppy and Luna play like Fumi

Penelope (Penicillium rubens), the penicillin mold, plays exactly like Fumi: you're a spore, each nutrient starts a colony, and you grow the same number of colonies each level. Her colonies turn denim blue in the middle, with a white fluffy edge. Miri (Aspergillus oryzae), the koji mold, plays the same way; her colonies turn olive yellow-green. Ruby (Hydnellum peckii), the bleeding tooth fungus, is a mushroom but plays the same way too: her colonies look like little white caps from above, browning in the middle and beading with red drops as they ripen. Rosie (Sporothrix schenckii) plays the same way; her colonies start cream and turn wrinkly and dark brown-black from the middle out. Trixie (Trichophyton mentagrophytes) plays the same way too; her colonies are white and powdery, with a warm tan middle. Velma (Flammulina velutipes), the velvet shank mushroom, plays the same way; her colonies are soft and cottony, and a tiny bunch of orange caps pops up in each one's middle as it ripens. Ember (Neurospora intermedia), the fire mold, plays the same way with one twist: her colonies spread about a third faster and get just a little wider (FAST_GROW_SECONDS and FAST_FULL in config.js), so they spread over nutrients sooner but also reach the zones sooner. They turn bright orange from the middle out, with orange tufts of spores. Quinn (Fusarium venenatum), the Quorn mold, plays the same way, with fluffy white colonies that turn pink-purple in the middle, but two of her disks, caspofungin and fluconazole, have no zone at all: she's resistant to them. Only touching those disks themselves counts, so you can grow right up to them. Inka (Coprinus comatus), the shaggy ink cap, plays the same way too: her colonies grow white and cottony, and once one is full size it melts from the middle out into a black ink puddle (MELT_SECONDS in config.js), the way her real caps melt to spread their spores. Poppy (Rhizopus stolonifer), the black bread mold, plays the same way; her fluffy white colonies fill with tiny dark gray pinhead spore pods as they ripen, and she's resistant to voriconazole and fluconazole, so those disks have no zone. Luna (Panellus stipticus), the bitter oyster, plays the same way too; her white, cottony colonies take on a soft green glow as they ripen, the way a plate of her shines in the dark.

Bea swims, and her pods do too

Bea (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis), the frog chytrid, plays like Fumi with a twist from her life cycle. You're her swimming spore, and each nutrient you reach starts a small, round spore pod instead of a spreading colony. A pod fills with spores, and when it's ripe it bursts and three tiny swimmers paddle off, each to the nearest nutrient, where it starts a new pod on its own. Every pod counts toward the level, so her swimmers help you win, but a swimmer that paddles into a zone pops.

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