Obviously this isn't a gaming blog, but i felt like this deserved a mention as most of the MalwareTech IRC has been addicted to it for the past few days (me included). The game is very simple: You're a small cell floating around the map and the aim is to get larger. At first you increase your mass by eating small non-moving pellets, but once your cell get larger the real fun begins and you can start eating other player's cells.
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Eating
Pellets
The map is littered with tiny hexagonal pellets, which each add one to your mass when eaten. These pellets are the only form of food until your cell gets big enough to eat other cells, and once a cell reaches 2000 mass pelleted are no longer enough to maintain size (be wary of cells larger than this size, they tend to be very aggressive).
Other Cells
Your cell can eat other player's as long as you are 10% bigger than they are; however, the larger your cell is the slower it moves, so smaller cells will only be caught if cornered or clumsy (Bare in mind you can only consume a cell by covering 90% of it).
The other way to eat other cells is by using the space bar to split your cell in half, which will send half of the cell flying off in the direction you're moving, consuming anything in its path. In order for you to consume another cell by splitting, the split part of the cell must be 33% bigger than the target (not the normal 10% for an non-split cell). It's even possible to split multiple times in a row, if required.
Obviously splitting isn't without its pitfalls, it takes 30 seconds plus an extra second for each 200 of your mass before the cells can rejoin, during this time you're vulnerable to getting eaten by smaller cells which are at least 10% bigger than one of your halves (in some cases a cell can eat one of your halves and then get big enough so split and eat the other).
Mass Ejection
By pressing the 'w' key, a cell can fire 16 mass in the direction it's traveling. This can be used as a peace offering to another cell, for sharing mass between friends, feeding viruses, or baiting pray into your kill range. When you eject mass, you lose 16 but anyone who picks it up only gains 12, making it about 80% efficient.
An effective way to get out of a chase was to rapidly fire mass in front of you, making your cell smaller and thus faster, then you'd reabsorb the mass as you traveled over it. When the efficiency of mass pickup was lowered to 80%, it generally became more effective to split your cell into two or more parts and just run like crazy.
Viruses
On every map you can find a number of green spiky balls which are the same size as a 132 mass cell; Bigger cells will explode into lots of tiny cells on contact, whilst smaller cells can safely pass through or hide inside it.
Viruses can be used as weapons against other cells and are the only way for a small cell to attack a larger one. By feeding mass into the virus 3 - 7 times it will grow larger and split in the same way a cell does, firing another viruses off in the opposite direction (this is an incredibly effective way to deal with much larger cells chasing you, because they're too slow to move away from the virus in time).
Some tips for getting to the top
- Don't be overly aggressive, especially towards larger cells, they will gang up and kill you for fun.
- Try and find a corner of a map fairly early on. Once you know where a corner is, you can work out how to stay away from the edges of the map.
- Early on in the game try to find an area with lots of viruses, cells which are too large to fit between the viruses will stay away.
- Never split in the presence of a cell slightly large than you, it will likely split and eat you.
- Don't worry too much about significantly larger cells, you're small fish to them and they usually won't bother with you (unless you annoy them).
- Try to make friends with a similar size cell, the game is significantly easier when you're working together.
- Never split more than 4 times unless you really want to get eaten.
- Be extremely careful when chasing a cell which is chasing another cell. If the cell you're chasing eats its prey before you eat it, the tables will turn and it won't show mercy.
- If you're being chased, try and get behind a virus; This will block larger cells from splitting to eat you and you can usually scare them off by starting to feed the virus.
- You can travel between split cells without being eaten, as long as you remain equal distance from the center of each cell, the same technique can be used for split cells to move over a virus without being affected/