Plate I · Arterial breach
Bacteria have broken through the artery wall. You have minutes, four kinds of cell, and no reinforcements coming. Real immunology, played as real-time strategy.
The premise
Most strategy games invent their own rules. This one borrows them from a system that has been at war for four billion years — and it turns out real immunology already plays like an RTS. Chemical gradients are pathing. Antigen presentation is a tech tree. Clotting is building a wall.
What you command
Four cell types with genuinely different jobs, not three reskins of the same soldier.
What you're fighting
Bacteria that swarm, follow nutrients, and physically shove your cells out of the way.
Who's making it
Arkayo — a Dutch hobbyist with a day job in something else entirely, learning Unity in public.
Specimens · Four cell lines
Every unit does in the game what it does in the body. That constraint is the design document.
Line 01
First responder
The most abundant white blood cell. Arrives first, kills fast, dies within hours.
Cheap, quick, deadly in a swarm and almost useless alone. Spend them.
Line 02
Holds ground
Greek for "big eater". Engulfs bacteria whole and lives in tissue for weeks.
Slow and heavy. Plug a corridor with one and the swarm has to come to it.
Line 03
Carries intelligence
Samples fragments of a pathogen and carries them back to teach the adaptive system.
Collects antigen from every kill nearby. Antigen is research. Research is your tech tree.
Line 04
Seals the breach
Not really a cell. A fragment that piles into a plug wherever a vessel tears.
Your only builder. Wall off the wound and the next wave has nowhere to enter.
Method · Anatomy of one wave
Step 01
A wound opens in the artery wall. Bacteria spill through and begin to divide.
Step 02
They don't beeline. They run and tumble up a nutrient gradient — which means you can bait them.
Step 03
Neutrophils go in first and thin the swarm. Macrophages take the chokepoint and absorb the pressure.
Step 04
Dendritic cells harvest antigen from the dead and carry it home. Upgrades unlock mid-fight.
Step 05
Platelets clot the wound shut. If you were fast enough, wave two arrives at a wall.
Field reports · Devlog
Every system in this game was learned on the way to writing it. The devlog is the honest version.
Bacteria stopped walking in straight lines, platelets learned to build, and the game finally remembers where you left off.
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The first procedural tissue maps: vessels, walls, and a lot of arguing with a language model about coordinates.
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No Unity experience, no coding background, one very specific idea about white blood cells. Entry one.
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