Cell Mimic

How to Play

A cell that escaped its petri dish has wandered onto a lab bench cluttered with equipment. To avoid being cleaned up by the inspector, it has learned one trick — mimicry: turn into a nearby piece of lab equipment and sit perfectly still among identical ones.

All the fun comes from one tension: stay still to stay safe, move and risk everything. Disguised and motionless, you are just another prop; but the moment you move inside the inspector's vision cone, a "prop" that walks looks suspicious, and it will come over to check. Get caught and you are out.

There are two modes: Mimic & Hide — you are the hider; outlast the timer to clear the level, and each level gets harder; and Inspector Hunt — you become the seeker, rooting out the disguised cells from a crowd of props.

Controls

· Desktop (Mimic & Hide): move with W A S D or the arrow keys, Space to mimic/release, Esc to pause.

· Mobile (Mimic & Hide): press and drag on the left side of the stage to bring up a virtual joystick; tap the Mimic button at the bottom-right to transform.

· Inspector Hunt (both): click / tap a prop to "inspect" it.

Tip: you can only mimic a prop when you are close to it; once disguised, staying still among a cluster of the same prop is the safest.

Equipment Field Guide

These are the six props you can mimic. Each one is a real piece of laboratory equipment.

Petri Dish dish

A shallow round dish used to culture microbial colonies — the most common vessel in a lab.

Test Tube glass

A slim glass tube for holding, mixing, and heating small liquid samples.

Beaker glassware

A wide graduated cup for preparing solutions and rough liquid measurement.

Centrifuge Tube tube

A cone-bottomed tube that, in a centrifuge, separates a sample's components by density.

Alcohol Lamp burner

A small alcohol-fueled lamp used for heating and flame sterilization.

Culture Flask flask

A round-bellied, narrow-necked flask for growing cells in liquid medium.

Tips & Strategy

After being seen moving, don't freeze on the spot — the inspector walks to the "suspicious point" to check. Use the 0.6-second wind-up while it raises its hand to slip out of view and re-mimic elsewhere.
Mimic where lots of the same prop are clustered; it is hard for a check to land precisely on you.
The alcohol lamp's flame always flickers — natural cover. The inspector only reacts to overall movement, never to a prop's built-in animation.
In Inspector Hunt, the prop that quietly twitches or shifts is almost always a disguised cell.

How the Inspector Actually Works

The inspector is not wandering at random. It runs on three states, and knowing which one it is in tells you exactly what you can get away with.

· Patrolling. It walks a route at a moderate pace, sweeping a cone of vision in front of it. The cone is fairly narrow — a little over sixty degrees — but it reaches a long way down the bench. Anything outside that wedge is effectively invisible to it, which is why standing behind the inspector is safe even at point-blank range.

· Suspicious. Movement inside the cone builds a suspicion meter rather than triggering an instant catch. Moving quickly fills it much faster than drifting slowly, and standing still drains it. This is the heart of the game: suspicion is a resource you spend by moving and recover by waiting.

· Inspecting. When the meter fills, the inspector commits to checking a specific spot. There is a short wind-up — roughly half a second — before the check lands. That wind-up is your escape window, and using it well is the difference between a short run and a long one.

· Chasing. If it identifies you outright it gives chase, and it takes a couple of seconds of broken line-of-sight before it loses you again.

The Rule That Changes Everything

You cannot outrun the inspector. Its chase speed is slightly higher than your top speed, which is a deliberate design decision rather than an oversight: running away in a straight line is always a losing move, and the gap closes no matter how far you start ahead.

Once you accept that, the whole game reframes itself. Escape is never about speed — it is about breaking line of sight and becoming furniture again. Put a wall or a cluster of props between you and the cone, stop, mimic, and wait. A chase you survive is one you ended by disappearing, not by winning a footrace.

The corollary is that distance is worth less than angle. Being far away inside the cone is more dangerous than being close but behind it. Good players think about which way the inspector is facing far more than about how many steps away it is.

Two Ways to Play

· Mimic & Hide puts you in the role of the cell. You survive a timer that grows longer with each level, disguising yourself among the props while one or more inspectors sweep the bench. Disguising takes a moment to complete and only works near a suitable prop, so it must be set up in advance — you cannot mimic your way out of a mistake already in progress.

· Inspector Hunt flips the roles. Now you are the one sweeping the bench, clicking on props to check whether they are really props. You have a minute, and every wrong guess costs you time — so scanning carefully beats clicking fast. The giveaway is motion: a genuine piece of equipment sits perfectly still or loops a fixed animation, while a disguised cell eventually twitches.

Playing the hunting mode makes you better at the hiding mode. Once you have hunted for twitching props yourself, you stop making the small nervous adjustments that give you away.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Cell Mimic free?: Yes — no install, no account, no payment. It is a single web page that runs in your browser.
Can I play it on a phone?: Yes. Press and drag on the left of the stage for a virtual joystick, and use the Mimic button to transform. That said, the game rewards seeing the whole bench at once, so a larger screen genuinely helps.
Why did I get caught while standing perfectly still?: Standing still lowers suspicion but does not erase what the inspector already saw. If the meter had already filled, it will still walk over and check the spot. Freezing works as prevention, not as a cure.
Can I just run away?: No — the inspector is slightly faster than you when chasing. Break line of sight and re-disguise instead.
Does mimicry make me invisible?: No. It makes you look like a prop, which only helps if the inspector has no particular reason to check that prop. Disguising in the open right after being seen rarely works; disguising among several identical props usually does.
Is my progress saved?: Level progress and high scores are stored in your own browser. Nothing is uploaded, and clearing site data will reset them.

Universe

Cell Mimic shares a cell universe with Cell Dodge (bullet-hell) and Cell Culture (idle) — and its hero is the very cell that slipped out of the petri dish in Cell Culture.

Changelog

v1.0.0 · 2026-07-20 · Initial release: Mimic & Hide and Inspector Hunt modes, a three-state inspector AI with a vision system, per-level difficulty, local high scores and level progress.