After a few months of late-night tinkering, the first public build of Rhizomachia is up. Free, pay-what-you-want, playable in the browser.
What it is
A two-player territory game where you don't place pieces — you grow them. Each turn you seed a spore, nourish the substrate, or poison an enemy colony. Between turns, the simulation takes over: your mycelial organisms spread on their own, following rules of nutrient flow, toxin pressure, and organic frontier growth.
The board isn't a grid. It's a 25×25 substrate of living nodes connected by hyphae filaments, inspired by Frei Otto's Occupying and Connecting.
What's in this build
- Local hotseat (two players, one keyboard)
- Single-player vs AI at three difficulty levels
- Four actions — seed, nourish, poison, prune
- Three win conditions — 55% biomass dominance, strangulation, or turn-40 advantage
- Deterministic simulation (every game replayable from its seed)
- Zero dependencies, ~26 KB gzipped
How it got here
Rhizomachia started as a fun research on land occupation, go, game of life and particles system. AI still needs to be improved. It now wins 98% against random and ~67% against a mid-tier version of itself — yet not enough to give a human a real fight. For now please enjoy the hotseat mode.. any feedback on human vs human is vital for tuning the game, and very much appreciated.
What's next
- Online multiplayer
- Audio — procedural ambient layer + action SFX
- Interactive tutorial
- Mobile touch support
Feedback, bug reports, and strategy discoveries all welcome. If you find a degenerate opening, tell me — the AI will learn from it. The game is still in a fluid state and rules and features may change depending on your feedback.
Rhizomachia — battle of the roots.