Cell Defense

Cell Defense is an action game with educational components for the Commodore 64.

At this very moment your cells are leading a brilliant counterattack against insidious parasites called viruses. Imagine yourself a microscopic mastermind, plunged deep into intercellular space, and responsible for the fate of the cells around you.

The player must defend a sector of the human body against an invading virus. These viruses will infect nearby cells, commandeering their machinery to replicate themselves, and then burst out and infect neighboring cells. The location of viruses, infected cells, blood vessels, and nearby T and B-cells are shown at the left of the screen.

The body is divided into labile cells, stable cells, and perennial cells, the loss of 60, 50, or 40% of these respectively leads to game over. At the start of each game, the player chooses the number of cell layers, virus infection rate, cell regrowth rate, and health of organism. The player must rapidly switch between and defend all cell layers. B-cells produce antibodies which can be placed to protect blood stream sectors. T-cells produce committed T-cells, which can be placed to destroy infected cells. Interferon helps protect healthy cells, and macrophages can be used to clean up migrating viruses.

The game is over when all invading viruses are destroyed or the organism is destroyed by overwhelming infection.