Salty: Evolution Simulator

Salty puts you at the eyepiece of a microscope, looking down at a single prokaryote adrift in saltwater. No nucleus. No defenses. No idea what's coming.

This game was born from a simple idea: let players experience the randomness of life while learning genuine cellular biology along the way. I noticed some of my young cousins always playing 1st person shooters, and they happened to be homeschooled. I thought, why not create something exciting, but learn something along the way, which would be a nice tool for homeschool parents. We take pride in offering a research-driven game where every creature behaves true to its real-world nature and interacts with others just as it would in the wild. Much of the experience is about engaging with nature, but it's equally entertaining to simply observe the mysterious world of microbiology.

A gentle, guided tutorial walks you through swimming, hunting, and building your first organelle; then quietly steps aside. We noticed that some players new to PC games struggled with standard controls, so we built a robust tutorial system for beginners, with the option to disable it entirely if you prefer.






Gather lipids, proteins, and fiber from the water around you, then spend them in the crafting ring to assemble real organelles — nucleus pores, ribosomes, mitochondria, Golgi bodies, lysosomes, endoplasmic reticulum. Each one you build genuinely changes what your organism can do, exactly as it does in a living cell.

Your progression is the biology: stack ribosomes to synthesize protein faster, grow a flagellum to dash, reinforce your membrane to survive rougher waters.





You are not alone in the water. Aggressive viruses hunt for cells to hijack. Larger organisms will run you down and consume you.

Fight back with real cellular weapons: engulf prey with phagocytosis, release an endotoxin burst to dissolve attackers, stun armored prey before striking, and dash out of danger with your flagellum. Learn what's dangerous. Grow strong enough to stop being prey.

Many more attack and defensive abilities are currently being worked on to increase the game engagement level. This is where we really need your feedback in our comments or to send a bug report in the game menu while trying out the demo.





Every species you meet is a real microorganism, recorded in your Compendium with its actual biology — what it eats, what it drops, and a page of true facts about the living creature. Discovery unlocks new DNA. New DNA unlocks new complexity. This game has advanced terminology and concepts that could lead to a narrow audience, but would be a nice bridge for those home-schooled teenagers and beyond to break up the monotony of textbook learning.

No quizzes, no lectures — getting good at Salty simply is understanding how cells work. The pop-up learning for discoveries is also an easy toggle switch in the game menu if your goal is to just play the game. All learning and tutorial systems have full voice-over for those that enjoy the audio learning focus.




From Garrack Gaming Studios — we build simulation games where the systems do the storytelling.