Gene Medic · FredyGames

About the game

Your patient has a common disease, and its cause is written in their DNA. Walk along the genes, pick the mutations you want to correct and edit them. Some edits have known effects, others are a gamble whose consequences only show after you make them.

Power-ups help you decide: the electronic health record (a computer) and the scientific literature (a page of text) reveal what an edit will do, and a money bag tops up your budget, because every edit costs money. The patient's health is the top score and the money spent is the bottom one. You win by bringing the patient to full health; you lose if their health drops to the minimum or the money runs out.

The author made it as an edutainment game to introduce the ideas behind genomic medicine.

Playing it here

This is a homebrew game made for the Atari 2600: a new game by independent developers for the 1977 console, not a commercial release. It runs here in Stellerator, an Atari 2600 emulator written in JavaScript. Click Play now and press Space on the start screen.

There are no save states on this platform: like on the real console, a game lasts as long as you keep playing, and P pauses it. A gamepad works too.

Controls

Key	Atari 2600	Action
Left / Right (or A / D)	Joystick	move the medic
Down (or S)	Joystick down	edit the mutation
Up (or W)	Joystick up	collect a power-up
Space or V	Joystick button	start the game
Enter	Game Reset	reset
P	—	pause

A few things worth knowing

Read before you cut. Collecting the health record or the literature power-up before an edit tells you whether that mutation is worth fixing.

Watch the budget. Every edit raises the money score; when it hits the maximum, the game is over even if the patient is improving.

The money bag is precious. It replenishes your resources, so take it whenever it shows up.

Credits and licence

Gene Medic was designed and programmed by Jason H. Moore and released under the MIT licence. The licence text is linked from this page.