ATAVISM

ATAVISM

*Grow yourself. Find the one worth being.*

> DNA — the most ancient technology there is.

Before computers, before fire, before tools, there was the genome: a code that
copies itself, builds bodies and carries mistakes through generations. ATAVISM
is about using that oldest of technologies as a machine: reading it, editing
it, and growing something from it.

The lab itself is old too: CRT monitors, VHS noise and barcode readouts,
a retro machine run by an even older code.
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ATAVISM is a dark laboratory sim about a former human trying to reverse his monstrous appearance through manipulations with his own DNA — the most ancient technology there is.

He grows clones from his own genome, hoping to create a body human enough to hold his brain.

The clones are grotesque, flawed, and sometimes childlike.

*They have not yet become people.*

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⚠ Content Warning

ATAVISM contains body horror, violence against childlike characters, and depictions of seizures.

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🧬 How It Works

1. Take a sample of your own genome and upload it to the lab computer.
2. Edit the DNA in the Genome Editing Terminal: five blocks, four bases (A, C, G, T), and a capsule of liquid that reacts to every change.
3. Grow a clone. Watch what you made: missing limbs, blindness, tremors, a broken voice, a cough that never stops. Some are born dead. Some carry diseases that stay hidden until it is too late.
4. Scan, study, learn. Every scan teaches you a little more. Your Rules Journal slowly fills with the hidden laws of the genome. They are different every run.
5. Find the right one — a clone with no mutations and no diseases — before the cancer in your body consumes you.


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✦ Features

- A new set of hidden genome rules every run. No memorized solutions.
- Clones with personalities. Some follow you, some play tag, some hide and cry when you aim at them, some hum a song while they walk.
- Pick them up, throw them, kick them. Or activate the collar.
- Two endings and a death. What you did on the way *almost* matters.
- Set in the same universe with *HAYWIRE* - our LD59 entry.

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🎮 Controls

- Move — `W` `A` `S` `D`
- Sprint — `Shift`
- Take your own sample — `Right Mouse Button`
- Scan a held clone / Charge the collar — `Left Mouse Button`
- Pick up, release, use computer — `E`
- Throw — hold and release `E`
- Kick — `F`
- Rules Journal — `Tab`
- Pause — `Esc`

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*Made with Godot 4.7.*