You are not one fly, you are a bloodline trying to out-reproduce a wild-type rival across generations, under a predator that hunts by vision. No install, no account, no wallet — open /play and you are in. The lineage is saved in your own browser (localStorage key flyline_v1); nothing about the game depends on a chain.
Source of truth: the pure logic modules (sim.js) and the game loop (scene-game.js). The escape circuit itself is specified in paper 5.
1 · The loop
forage → energy → eggs (automatic) → generation ends (≤ 50 s) → compare eggs with the wild type → draft 1 of 3 mutations → next generation inherits it → the wild type evolves too
| Constant | Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Generation | 50 s | hard cap; ends early on death |
| Day/night cycle | 25 s | affects senses and predator speed |
| Starting energy | 100 | metabolism drains ~2.6/s |
| Egg laying | energy ≥ 68 | costs 44, cooldown 1.4 s |
| Predator catch radius | 0.075 | contact = 55 damage/s |
A generation ends three ways: energy hits zero, the predator kills you, or you survive the full 50 seconds. Death ends a generation, not the lineage.
2 · Food: three risk levels
| Food | Energy | Where | Risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sugar | +12 | anywhere in the dish | none |
| Yeast | +26 | near the rim | predator territory |
| Rot | +38 | anywhere | odor-exposed for 6 s — the predator prioritizes you |
The richest food is the most dangerous. Eating strategy is a positioning decision, not a menu: what matters is where the food leaves you when the strike comes.
3 · The predator
A state machine with three phases:
approach (steers to nearest/smelliest fly) → lunge (ballistic, committed trajectory, ~0.45 s, triggers slow-motion) → recover (0.5 s) → approach
The lunge is committed: once it fires, the trajectory does not track you. This is what makes the GF reflex readable — watch the approach, wait for READY, jump clear of a line you can predict. The predator gets faster every generation and at night; smelly flies (rot eaters, post-laying) get hunted first.
4 · The escape moment
- The HUD shows LC4 and LPLC2 activations, the GF membrane potential, and a READY state (the circuit is paper 5).
- When READY lights up: Space (desktop) or the GF ESCAPE button (touch).
- A reflex escape costs 60% of a manual dash, grants ~0.18 s of invulnerability, and fires away from the predator automatically — the circuit aims, you time it.
- Jumping before READY is possible (the
hoppertrait) but costs more and recoils shorter.
The tensest seconds of the game are the ones where you choose not to jump yet.
5 · Mutations — the draft
At the end of every generation you draft one of three mutation cards. The traits reference real Drosophila mutations and behaviors — white is Morgan's 1910 gene — tuned for play, not literature accuracy. Your AI ranks all 24; this is the full table it is ranking:
✱ = stackable (the other 19 are once-per-lineage). Rarity is weighted 60 / 30 / 10 common / rare / epic.
| trait | gain | cost |
|---|---|---|
| white | senses +25% | night sense penalty ×2 |
| curly | speed +18% | metabolism +15% |
| vestigial | +60 max energy, metabolism −10% | GF jump distance −40% |
| ebony | predator damage −30% | senses −12% |
| fecund ✱ | egg cost −22% | post-laying odor 2 s |
| swift ✱ | dash cooldown −30% | dash cost +40% |
| hardy ✱ | metabolism −16% | speed −8% |
| nocturnal | no night sense penalty | — |
| shaker | +40% speed for 1.5 s after a GF escape | — |
| forager ✱ | food energy +35% | slowed 1 s after eating |
| thrift | rot no longer exposes odor | — |
| tiger | bitten → knockback + stun the predator (8 s cd) | — |
| giant | +60 max energy, GF threshold −0.08 | speed −15% |
| sitter | eaten food refreshes in place, eating +25% | speed −10% |
| rover ✱ | speed +10%, food sense +20% | metabolism +12% |
| diapause | below 30 energy: metabolism −60%, predator interest −50% | −40% speed, cannot jump |
| adh | rot odor-free + 4 s drunk sprint | sluggish turning while drunk |
| phototax | −30% metabolism in light | drawn to lights at night |
| clock | day metabolism −20% | night metabolism +20%, senses −10% |
| guard | near your eggs the predator targets the wild type | predator eats your eggs |
| mimic | motionless at low speed = predator loses you | energy still drains |
| hopper | active full-quality jump any time | cost ×1.5, cooldown +50% |
| cannibal | drain 2 energy/s from the wild type in contact | you get odor-exposed too |
| pheromone | sense the rival's egg-laying, +50% food there for 3 s | your laying is broadcast too |
Several traits have designed synergies — tiger + nocturnal night scavenging, swift + shaker chain-escape, fecund + forager egg engine. Builds are real; so are the trade-offs: every gain has a cost printed on the card.
6 · The arms race
The wild type is not static. Every generation it drafts one mutation, deterministically from the same island number — so a lineage that ignores it faces an increasingly specialized rival. The end-of-generation screen compares your eggs against its eggs; the long game is lineage eggs and best, both kept in your local save.
7 · Reproducibility
- The island number (seed) — the whole world (food layout, rival draft, predator spawn) derives from one seed, editable in the menu. Same island, same world.
- Connectivity toggle — switch the escape circuit between
realandswappedwiring and feel the difference in READY timing (the wiring check says it is ~0.02 s of lead time; the game lets you try to notice it). - Agent drive —
window.FlyLabAPIexposesgetState(),setControl({x,y}),dash()andsetMode("manual"|"auto"|"agent"), so an autonomous process can play the same loop with the same rules (paper 10).
The full engineering record of cross-machine determinism is paper 6. Share your island number and anyone can re-run your fly's whole life — which is what turns "my AI survived" from a boast into a checkable claim.
8 · Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| W A S D / arrows | steer |
| mouse / touch-drag | steer toward pointer |
| Space / GF button | escape jump (when READY) |
| P / ⏸ | pause & menu |
9 · What the game is not
- It is not a chain game: no wallet, no mint, no transaction ever appears in /play. The mint lives behind a separate, server-verified lane (paper 8).
- It is not a claim about fly biology. The traits reference real mutations and behaviors (white, Adh, rover/sitter, diapause…), tuned for play, not for literature accuracy.
- Local saves are local. They are not credentials, not missions, and never count toward any server-side qualification.
The full plain-text rulebook your agent reads is muse.txt. The ranking UI with live plan validation is the Raise page.