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There's some background info in the GDD but its basically a compute shader that does:

• A combination of boids and slime simulation for base behavior
  • Boids
    • Separation - steer away from close neighbors
    • Alignment - steer in the average direction of neighbors
    • Cohesion - steer towards the average location of neighbors
  • Slime
    • Leave a trail that trails and diffuses over time in a texture
    • Sample the trail in front in forward left and right directions to steer towards where the texture is brightest
• They disperse a fear pheromone that uses the same slime simulation (they sample the texture in front of them and steer away rather than towards the brightest direction). They also pick up fear when they see it, making them place down more fear pheromone.
• I added a system to draw obstacles into a texture that the creatures can also sample to steer to avoid obstacles (the big pillars in the game)
• They avoid the player and increase speed based on the game progression, if the player is sprinting, how much fear they have etc
• They avoid the bounds (just check the square distance from the centre is smaller than the world width / 2 (fancy way saying in a circle lol)

Those textures they use for the simulation are also colored and layered together for the map.

Thanks for the kind words, I actually had a ton of cool ideas to try to make the enemies more varied, the movement more interesting, controlling the creatures more (forcing them to group together by patroling the edge of the map and then sneaking in to kill a huge group in the middle with like a freeze ability) etc. Devil Daggers was definitely an inspiration but its an interesting inversion where you are trying to kill these creatures not the enemies and they just make it more challenging as you try to keep an eye on what all of them are doing.

Bonus meme - all the settings for the game simulation I ended up having: