Help us finish our strategy video game that takes place in the molecular world of cells and microbial pathogens.  Play the free demo now:  Immune Defense Demo!

Immune Defense is a strategy game for everybody.  It will be ready for beta testing by the end of February 2016 and released on tablets by May 2016. Our team building and new design doc is ready, read more at MolecularJig.com.  

You play the role of the pilot of a drone: a microbot that is the size of a while blood cell.  You summon white blood cells and use them to destroy the invading pathogens.  The invaders are pathogens such as E. coli, Staph, pneumonia, and coming later... Malaria, AIDS, SARS, Ebola, bird flu and Tuberculosis.  

Originally funded by a research grant from the National Institutes of Health, the Immune Defense prototype was researched and developed to be both a strategy game and an effective teaching tool that doesn’t bore you (i.e. it’s a lot of fun!).  Play tested by 14-19 year old high school students and iterated upon for 2 years by Melanie and her team, we are confident that we have a winning combination of strategy and science!  Research paper download here.

Read even more about our company, Molecular Jig Games.

Gameplay

You spend “energy” to summon white blood cells (the “towers” or “soldiers” in this game), which you will use to defeat pathogens.  You gain energy for every pathogen you kill, which you use to summon more white blood cells.  If you’re familiar with tower defense games like Plants vs. Zombies and Field Runners or strategy games like Starcraft/Warcraft, then the gameplay will feel familiar to you.  

Although white blood cells are lean, mean, killing machines, your cells don't automatically know where to go and what to use to kill a pathogen.  White blood cells don’t have advanced cameras, motion detectors, laser range finders, etc. to find their enemies.  However, they have something very close to it: receptors!  Receptors are the colorful things on the cell surface (see Image below. Receptors respond to molecules in the environment and on the surface of the pathogens. To win, you need to equip your cells with the right receptors, so that they can track, bind, and destroy the pathogens before the inflammation level gets too high.

You must destroy all the pathogens in the area before inflammation gets too high.

Basic Strategy In Immune Defense (in gif)

Equip your cells with “receptors” 

The cells will use MOVE receptors (the purple forks in the gifs) to follow “signal” proteins (complement factors) that are activated by the pathogens:

Cells bind to the pathogen with JOB receptors (the orange forks in the gifs), eat the pathogen (endocytosis), and digest it in a phagosome (see the red dots).  

Summon white blood cells and equip them appropriately with receptors to track, bind, and destroy pathogens.  The player must destroy all the pathogens in the area before inflammation gets too high in order to win.

What is “inflammation?”

Inflammation is the body's response to infection.  Inflammation is one word that means many things.  In general, inflammation causes damage to organic things, which is useful when there are organic invaders that need to be eradicated, but it can, and often does, damage the body as well.  In Immune Defense, the inflammation indicator is essentially a measure of how much collateral damage the body is taking in order to respond to the infection.  How fast inflammation increases depends on the type and number of pathogens in the area and also on the actions of the player.  (More on this below)

Advanced Gameplay ...

As the player encounters deadlier, more resilient pathogens in the game, defeating them becomes more tricky.  Staphylococcus aureus (Staph for short), for example, are equipped with a special enzyme that makes them harder to dissolve, some multiply.  

Your first advanced maneuver is “Activation,” or telling your eater cells to temporarily use more firepower (inflammation) to clear the infection.  It’s like temporarily boosting your soldiers’ stats (think “stims” for marines in Starcraft).  Activated neutrophils can eat several pathogens at once and use oxidative bursts to dissolve them more quickly.  However, More firepower means more collateral damage to the body.  

Similar to technology levels in RTS games, there are several levels of activation in Immune Defense.  Each level is more complex than the last and are used to combat deadlier infections.  The gifs below show the first level of activation.

Macrophages release “TNF” when they detect infection.  Neutrophils become activated by TNF through their activation receptor:

There are many more tools for players to use and for pathogens to evade as Immune Defense goes on and on.  

Our Goals

We have worked hard to get the prototype described above.  But we want to take it further!  We want to expand on the prototype and reach as many people as we can.  We want to add more levels, implement more cells from the immune system, implement more pathogens, add new “weapons” via vaccinations and drugs.  And we want to iterate, iterate, iterate, to make sure our levels are fun and full of science!

Here are our planned targets with your help:

• Goal 1: $10,000: Add more levels (about 30) and more pathogens to our Mac/PC/Linux/Web game.  Optimize for a tablet release.

• Goal 2: $20,000 Add more levels (about 30 additional levels), more pathogens, and add new white blood cells and VACCINATIONS to the PC/Web/tablet game!  Vaccination is essentially crafting your own weapons: player decides which pathogen to target, then chooses an antigen and an adjuvant and feeds them to a Dendritic cell.  Dendritic cells activate the cells that make antibodies.  Antibodies are weapons designed specifically for a particular pathogen!  You can see how vaccination will be a fun part of our strategy game and also a fun way to introduce the actual ingredients of a vaccination.

• Goal 3: $50,000 Add more levels (about 30 additional levels), more pathogens, and add T-Cells to the PC/Web/tablet game!  With T-cells you battle viruses like AIDS, SARS, and other lethal human pathogens like Tuberculosis.  T-Helper and T-Killer cells use the same interface and same three classes of receptors to form a bond with infected cells or with Macrophages.  Players create the T and B cells using Dendritic cells and Vaccination.

The Impact

Our goal is large and meaningful: to popularize molecular biology. Imagine, for example, the detailed discussions about health issues we could have if proteins were as well understood as zombies!  

Immune Defense fills in the details that we miss in general education.  It teaches us some advanced molecular biology concepts, providing both fun and insight into our own bodies.  

• A free version will always be available for everyone to use on the web. Play the FREE DEMO: Immune Defense on Kongregate.com

• Teachers can use our free demo and free videos to demonstrate diffusion, cell differentiation and cell to cell communication, protein structure, protein function, etc. to their students: www.MolecularJig.com/teachers

• After playing Immune Defense, players have a common vocabulary.  Using our interface to explain cell biology will be useful for teachers and students as well as non-biologists who want to understand cells better.  The "Move, Job, Act" categories of receptors are chosen because they allow us to re-create, and therefore, explain a wide range of cellular functions.  

• ***Pledge $15 or more to our project and receive one digital copy of Immune Defense and all future games ever released by Molecular Jig Games,as long as Melanie owns the company.***

Risks & Challenges

The prototype is online now, you can play for free in your web browser!  Play the FREE DEMO: Immune Defense on Kongregate.com

• The game is designed, and the basic, $10,000 level game is already developed.  Melanie and John want to make these 30 levels levels fun to play.  We are planning for 6 months of iteration and balance.  We would develop, iterate and balance for 12 months if we reach $50,000.  Our design document details the additions we want to make, once we have some funds we will discuss the feasibility of each of these additions with our team.  

• Melanie and John, shown below, are long time DC friends.  Together they have the development, design and project management chops to finish and polish this game.  We could just throw it together but we want the non-scientists to be really excited about it, so we want to play test and iterate longer.  

Other Ways You Can Help

• Tell your friends, teachers and colleagues about www.ImmuneDefenseGame.com Everyone can use our free demo!

• Register with us to beta test, to be a scientific or educational advisor, or be a game design/development advisor.  www.MolecularJig.com

• Use the Indiegogo share tools!

Melanie, John and Shawn (not pictured!) thank you! Below is the Immune Defense demonstration at the NIH "Science in 3D" conference.  

More Details at www.MolecularJig.com.

Bonus GIFs of the bad guys and good guys that we have so far!

The “bad guys” in Immune Defense

E. coli, ever present on Humans and animals, but not pathogenic… under these conditions, that is.

Neisseria meningitidis have one trick: the ability to avoid detection. Luckily, they don’t grow too fast.

Streptococcus pneumoniae, these bacteria are missing one common molecule: the one we usually use to catch bacteria.

Staphylococcus aureus. While many bacteria intend to make a home inside of us, few have the equipment required.  Staph is both extremely common on our skin and well prepared to live under it.

Listeria monocytogenes: a beautiful, resourceful eukaryotic pathogen… more like us than we care to admit, this parasite knows how to use our cells for their own pleasure.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is known to you as TB, or “consumption.” TB is eager to be eaten by Macrophages, making a stable home in the phagosome.  Yes, our only tool for killing bacteria is in fact a happy home for this devastating human pathogen.  

Our “allies” in the fight against pathogens ...

Neutrophil’s only drawback is its short life.  Neutrophils eat fast and die hard. Part of every infection clean up job includes eating up the drifted piles of dead Neutrophil bodies.

Macrophages: expensive, slow, but very powerful… so powerful in fact that their highest levels of activation will be carefully regulated by Helper T-Cells you craft. (PS: Crafting Helper T-Cells is vaccination!)

Stages 

Immune Defense takes place in various parts of the body.

The Best Defense is Broken (The Splinter)

Your skin is covered with potentially pathogenic bacteria.  A simple splinter may be all they need to find a new home inside you.

A Vulnerable Place (The Lungs)

The lungs are a vulnerable place.  Pathogens arrive with every breath.  TB and Measles may hang in the mists.  It’s continuous warfare.

A Delicate Situation (In between the Meninges of the Brain)

Track pathogens and defeat them carefully in this sensitive area surrounding the brain where inflammation can be especially deadly.