Menus & Meta

Title screen

Title

The game opens inside a capillary: blood cells stream past, immune cells patrol, and your virus hangs backlit with its first progeny circling it.

• The heart beats lub-dub and the whole stream surges with it
• The StrainBorn logo's O is a virion, and the infection spreads out from it across the letters
• Tagline: “Infect. Mutate. Spread.”
• The first time you play, New Game is the only button; after that, Continue opens the save file you played last, with New Game under it and Load Game beside New Game once you have two or more
• Tap anywhere to skip the intro
• Your virus wears its equipped skin
• A chip shows the virus, level, generation number and generation name of the save file Continue opens

PLAY on the left, LEVEL UP on the right, with your current virus in the middle of it all.

• PLAY: Infect a Host (Collect: XP), Pandemic (Collect: RNA), Endless (Collect: Ribozymes) and Modifiers (a pip for each of up to 3 loaded)
• Virus card: name, role, generation number and name, current strain, level and XP bar; tap it for the Family Tree
• LEVEL UP: Petri Lab, Skills and Gear, each showing what's waiting (upgrades to unlock, skill points, new gear)
• Challenges (rewards to collect, open challenges), Codex and Store (skins: looks only)
• Header: back to the title, your resources, your pet's farm, Stats (every stat and where it comes from) and Settings

A new player sees only Infect a Host; every other feature appears as it opens, one “coming soon” teaser at a time, with a NEW tag until you visit it.

• Skills and Codex: finish a run
• Gear: finish a run (and have gear, or finish two)
• Petri Lab: Level 2
• Challenges and Store: Level 3
• Pandemic Game Mode: Level 5 (any virus)
• Endless Game Mode: Level 7 (for the selected virus)
• Run Modifiers: Level 8

Pandemic Game Mode, Endless Game Mode and Run Modifiers each announce themselves with a NEW FEATURE UNLOCKED card the first time they open.

• Each card says what the feature does, what's special about it and where to find it
• Pandemic Game Mode: the only place RNA drops
• Endless Game Mode: the only place Ribozyme Cores drop, needed to enhance gear past +2
• Run Modifiers: craft them, then load up to 3 before a run

Resources and the drops guide

Quality of life

Everything you've collected sits in one chip, and tapping any resource anywhere opens a guide to what it is and where it drops.

• Shows A, T, C and G, RNA (once Pandemic Game Mode opens) and any materials you own
• Nucleotide piles are about 35% A, 30% T, 22% C and only about 13% G
• Covers RNA, Polymerase Shards, Chaperones, Ribozyme Cores, gear, Vesicle Chests, Mutation Orbs, CRISPR, elemental power-ups and Dormant Virions
• Links open the matching Codex entry (not during a run)
• A “NEW MATERIAL NEEDED” card the first time you need RNA or Ribozyme Cores names the Game Mode that drops them

Family Tree

Lineage

Your lineage as a tree: one lane per virus, generations running left to right, each with its look, number and mutation.

• Locked viruses show the level they open at: Retrovirus at 4, Halovirus at 8, Filovirus at 12
• Legend: host taken, turned into another virus, playing next, mutation (thicker = stacked)
• Tap a generation for its virus, strain and the traits it picked
• Header counts generations and hosts taken
• Tap a virus for its card: its passive, signature ability and ultimate as short lines with icons, and on the Real World tab what the virus is in real life

Inherited

Lineage

Every generation passes a little of itself down. The Inherited panel lists each bonus your lineage has built up and how close it is to its cap.

• Opened from the Family Tree header
• Each bonus has a cap, marked (max) once reached
• Inherited bonuses apply in Infect and Pandemic Game Mode runs, not in Endless Game Mode

Challenges

Level 3

Four tabs: Rewards, Daily, Weekly and Milestones. Finishing challenges pays nucleotides, materials, gear, XP and skill points.

• Opens on Rewards when something is waiting, otherwise on Daily
• Rewards wait until you collect them; Collect all takes them in one go
• Also viewable from the pause menu (collected from the main menu)
• A banner pops up wherever you are when a challenge is completed

Daily challenges

3 a day

One Easy, one Normal and one Hard challenge every day, refreshed at local midnight.

• Drawn from pools of 16 Easy, 16 Normal and 14 Hard
• Easy examples: Morning Infection (60 kills), Sightseeing, Ambusher
• Normal examples: Boss of the Day, Clean Hands, Puzzle of the Day
• Hard examples: Go Deep, Bring Down a Killer, Ghost Day, Escalation
• A countdown shows when the next dailies arrive

Weekly challenges

3 a week

One Normal, one Hard and one Elite challenge every week, refreshed on Mondays.

• Drawn from pools of 12 Normal, 12 Hard and 10 Elite
• Normal examples: Weekly Outbreak (1,000 kills), Workshop Week, Trophy Week
• Hard examples: Boss Week, Siege Week, Mutation Week
• Elite examples: Deep Dive, Massacre, Weekly Victory, Myth Hunt

Milestones

11 groups

Long-term goals in chains of steps, filtered by group.

• Groups: Combat, Enemies, Bosses, Immune System, Rivals, Map, Hazards, Pickups, Traits, Gear, Progression
• Chains show STEP n/N and move on to the next step once collected
• Some count across all runs, some in a single run
• Organ milestones (beating each boss, reaching each organ) pay 32 bonus skill points in all, front-loaded for early progress

Challenge rewards

5 tiers

What a challenge pays depends on its difficulty.

• Easy: 36+ nucleotides, 6 shards, 6 XP
• Normal: 105+ nucleotides, 15 shards, 15 XP
• Hard: 270+ nucleotides, 36 shards, a Rare gear piece, 40 XP
• Elite: 630+ nucleotides, 72 shards, an Epic gear piece, 1 skill point, 100 XP
• Legendary: 1,440+ nucleotides, 150 shards, a Legendary gear piece, 2 skill points, 220 XP
• Gear rewards never exceed the tier your furthest organ allows

Every stat your virus has, and where each one comes from: base + skills + Lab + gear + modifiers + mutations = total.

• Open it with the chart button at the top of the main menu (your next run, before any traits) or with Stats in the pause menu (this run, with the traits you've picked up)
• Each line shows the base value, then what each source adds in its own colour, then the total; Other covers your strain, your pet's bonuses, your lineage's inherited bonuses and, in a run, your host's genes
• 23 stats: max HP, damage, shots per second, projectiles per shot, pierce, critical hit chance and damage, projectile speed, move speed, dash recharge and distance, damage taken, regeneration, lifesteal, healing per kill and after a room, contact damage to cells, ultimate and signature ability charge, ambush damage, Detection gain, pickup range and nucleotides from cells
• Situational bonuses (stacks, kill streaks, low-health and other conditional skills) only count while they're active, so they aren't in the totals
• Total play time counts the time the game is open and in front with this save file loaded, menus included, from version 1.0.13 on; In runs counts only time spent playing a run, not paused
• Abandoning a run doesn't take its time back off the clock

Keep several games side by side. Each save file has its own name, virus, levels, gear, lineage, Petri Lab, skills, challenges, Game Mode progress and pet virus.

• The first time you play, New Game asks you to name your save file: Save 1 by default, then Save 2 and so on
• With one save file the title screen shows Continue and New Game; with two or more, Continue sits on top with New Game and Load Game side by side under it
• Continue opens the save file you played last, and its name is on the button
• Load Game lists every save file with its virus, level, generation, deepest organ, play time and when you last played it; LAST PLAYED marks the one Continue opens
• Rename a save file (no two can share a name, whatever the capitals) or delete it; deleting asks first and can't be undone
• A run you closed the game during stays with its save file, marked RUN IN PROGRESS in Load Game: load that save and its main menu offers to pick it up
• While you play one save file, the pets of the others wait: they don't get hungry and their care streaks are safe
• Settings, the language, controller buttons and your Player ID are shared by every save file
• Progress from before save files arrived (version 1.0.13) became Save 1