Tumors that spread
Cancer
Once cancer unlocks, most organs grow a tumor on a timer. Leave it alive and it grows, spreads into other rooms, sends assassins after you and follows you into the next organ. Destroy it and you feast.
Tumor rooms
A room that grows while you play
Once cancer unlocks for your save, most organs can grow one tumor room, marked pink on the minimap. A timer in the bottom-left corner alternates between growing and spreading, and each stage adds health, satellites, faster attacks and a bigger payout. The doors never lock, so you choose when to fight it and when to walk away.
- Tumors grow in Infect and Pandemic Game Modes, never in Endless
- The timer pauses while you fight inside the tumor room
- A spread invades an unexplored fight room or buds a new one, never beside the boss
- Leaving keeps your progress, though Liver lobes grow back
- Tumor cells never turn elite, never adapt and never raise Detection
Organ cancers
Eight cancers, eight puzzles
Each organ grows its own cancer, and every one is a puzzle with a weak point to find. The shallow organs share classic tumor parts, while every deeper cancer is built from scratch. Deeper organs also let a tumor reach more stages and spread further.
- Leukemia: find the gold stem cell while the thickening blood slows you
- Lymphoma: clones hide among harmless lymphocytes, and the core is soft only while it swells
- Colon Carcinoma: a shell game of crypts, with polyps leaving caustic pools
- Hepatocellular Carcinoma: kill every lobe before one regrows and the core turns cirrhotic
- Glioblastoma: cut down the glial nodes it hops between to strand it
Tumor attacks
Read the swell
Every tumor attack is telegraphed by a swell before it fires. Classic cores choose from a shared set of volley patterns and never repeat one back to back, while deeper cancers add attacks and floor hazards of their own. CRISPR cuts through ordinary tumor cells, but the cores resist it.
At a glance
- Watch for the swell, then move before the volley lands
- Destroyed satellites stay dead if you leave and come back
- The core keeps its damage while you're away
- Pools, lesions and tendrils vanish when you leave the room
- Tumor cells never lose track of you
Metastasis
Leave it alive and it follows you
Leave an organ with a living tumor and the next organ is guaranteed one at the stage it reached, still able to grow all the way. Sometimes Radiation Therapy shrinks it by a stage, but it scorches you for a while, though never fatally. While that tumor lives, nearly invisible assassins come for you, announced by a heartbeat and THEY'RE COMING.
At a glance
- The leave prompt warns you, and a METASTASIS banner confirms it
- Assassins arrive at the far entrance, coil, mark a red line, then pounce
- A bite MARKS you so you take more damage
- They never strike in the boss room or while you fight in the tumor room
- Every organ's assassin has a twist, like the Glial Infiltrator's double pounce
Rewards
Kill the core, collapse the tumor
Destroy the core and the whole tumor collapses in apoptosis under a TUMOR DESTROYED banner. The payout grows with the organ and the stage: nucleotides, a chest, a mutation orb and chaperones, plus RNA in Pandemic Game Mode and a small chance of an extra life.
At a glance
- Satellites drop a little on their own
- Cells budded by a spread pay nothing
- Oncolytic, Tumor Hunter and Remission challenges reward hunting tumors
- Daily and weekly challenges can send you after tumors too
Oncolytic builds
Build a cancer hunter
Oncolytic Payload is a Cancer trait from mutation orbs that makes you hit tumors and all their cells harder, assassins included, and it stacks. Oncolytic Strain grows a tumor in every organ that takes more damage and pays more, while Carcinogen Exposure makes tumors grow faster and start bigger for a bigger payout. Host conditions, host genes and Mexico City's policy in Pandemic Game Mode tip the odds too.
At a glance
- Oncolytic Payload is only offered once cancer is unlocked
- The Tumor Harvest and Cancer Cartel modifier combos heal you fully when you destroy a tumor
- Metastatic Cancer puts a bigger, faster tumor in every organ, while Chemotherapy shrinks tumors but poisons you
- Strong p53 slows tumor growth, while BRCA makes tumors grow faster and spread further
- Contingencia Ambiental puts a tumor in every organ that grows faster but pays more