Cell Games is an independent hobby project — a small collection of free browser games united by a single theme: the cell. It is built and maintained by one developer with a background in bioinformatics, which is where the biology flavour and the recurring cast of cells, strains and lab equipment come from.
Cell biology is full of things that are already shaped like games. A cell hiding from immune surveillance is a stealth mechanic. A culture doubling in a dish is an incremental curve. A cell absorbing constant molecular damage is, quite literally, a bullet-hell screen. Most educational games start with a lesson and bolt on play; these start from the mechanic that biology already suggests, and let the science sit underneath it.
That means these are games first. Nothing here is a quiz, nothing tests you, and you can play all four without reading a word of biology. The science is available if you want it — each game has a section explaining what is real and what has been bent for playability, and the articles go further — but it is never in the way.
Cell Rush is a 3D endless runner through a blood vessel, dodging clots and fibrin at increasing speed. Cell Dodge is a bullet-hell action game about weaving a single cell through waves of projectiles and multi-phase bosses. Cell Culture is an idle incremental game where a petri dish of cells grows and earns on its own. Cell Mimic is a top-down hide-and-seek game where a cell disguises itself as lab equipment to evade an AI inspector.
They share a light continuity: the cell you grow in Cell Culture is the one that escapes the dish and hides from the inspector in Cell Mimic, and the same escapee later ends up swept into the bloodstream in Cell Rush. You can play them in any order — see the games page for a fuller description of each.
All four games are hand-written single HTML files — plain JavaScript and canvas, no framework and no build step, which is why they open almost instantly. Only Cell Rush pulls in a library, Three.js, for its 3D vessel.
Cell Dodge was originally the exception: a Godot engine build compiled to WebAssembly. It played well, but it made the browser download around forty megabytes of engine before anything appeared, which is a long time to ask someone to stare at an empty rectangle on a phone. It was rewritten as a single file of roughly fifty kilobytes — about eight hundred times smaller — and now starts as quickly as everything else here. What went wrong the first time is written up in the devlog.
There is no server-side game logic anywhere on this site. No account system exists, no scores are uploaded, and there is no database of players — partly on principle, and partly because a project this size should not be collecting things it does not need.
The science here is stylised but not invented. Every strain in Cell Culture is a real cell type, every prop in Cell Mimic is a real piece of lab equipment, and every obstacle in Cell Rush is a real feature of blood. Where a game bends reality for playability — cells do not sprint through vessels, and they certainly do not dodge — the game's own page says so plainly rather than quietly implying otherwise.
If you find something that is actually wrong rather than deliberately simplified, please say so. Corrections are welcome and get fixed.
Cell Games is free and intends to stay that way. Running costs are modest, and the plan is to cover them with unobtrusive advertising rather than by charging for the games, adding purchases, or collecting and selling data about players. Nothing about a game's difficulty or progression will ever depend on money. See the privacy policy for what advertising means for your data.
These games are actively tinkered with, and player feedback genuinely shapes them — bug reports, balance complaints and "this bit is confusing" are all useful. If you hit a problem, have a suggestion, or just want to say hello, please visit the Contact page.