Tardigrades
Petri dish defense
Stop the water bears
Tap to squish. They split. Spend DNA on bigger weapons. Save up for the nuke.
1000 DNA. Clears the whole dish and ends the round. 1000 DNA to go.
Best: 0 squished. Selected: Squish — A firm boop. The one thing they can't survive.
Field notes
Tiny
About half a millimeter long, with eight stubby legs tipped in claws. They live in moss, lichen, and leaf litter nearly everywhere on Earth.
The tun
Dried out, they curl into a barrel called a tun and nearly stop their metabolism. That's why curled-up bears in the game shrug off heat, cold, salt, radiation, and vacuum.
Been to space
In 2007 tardigrades rode outside a satellite, exposed to the vacuum of space, and some came home alive. They also take thousands of times the radiation dose that kills a person.
Game liberty
Real tardigrades don't split in two; they lay eggs. And squishing really does work.