atomica

atomica

Mostly Negative · 12 reviews

25% positive (3 / 12)

Screenshots

atomica screenshot 1
atomica screenshot 2
atomica screenshot 3
atomica screenshot 4
atomica screenshot 5
atomica screenshot 6
atomica screenshot 7
atomica screenshot 8
atomica screenshot 9
atomica screenshot 10
atomica screenshot 11

Description

Parkour through a living cell. Climb 3 km through a real Mycoplasma genitalium, built molecule by molecule from Scripps Research's cellPACK model. Open proteins into atoms, dock ligands, run real molecular dynamics, and race to the top. Free.

Released

October 7, 2025

Price

Free

Platforms

Windows

Developer

Steven R Ness

Publisher

Steven R Ness

Last sync

October 8, 2026

About

Every molecule in Atomica is a real one. This is Scripps Research's cellPACK model of Mycoplasma genitalium, one of the smallest living things: about 120,000 proteins, ribosomes and strands of DNA and RNA, each where the model places it, inside a membrane of 660,000 lipids. You are the size of a couple of atoms. The cell is a three-kilometre climb.

Climb. Run across proteins, double-jump between them, grab a wall and climb it. Ligands launch you upward. The global leaderboard keeps the fastest time out of the cell.

Look closer. Point at anything to learn what it is and what it does. Open a protein into its atoms; its binding sites glow gold.

Do chemistry. Collect ligands, dock them into binding sites, and when a substrate fits its enzyme, the reaction happens. Run glycolysis, nine enzymes long, and make ATP.

Simulate. Watch phosphoglycerate kinase's atoms move under a real force field, computed live by OpenMM.

Listen. What you hear is the cell's real activity turned into sound: Brownian motion, ribosomes adding amino acids, ATP synthase's rotor turning a hundred times a second.

Quests, cards and riddles, eight Steam achievements, a visitor waiting above the cell, and VR Explore: fly through the cell in a PC VR headset (the climb, docking and the info panel are flat-screen only).

Fourteen languages. Free, and it will stay free.

Browse all