Adapt or Die

You never pilot a single unit. You author the pressures of evolution and watch — blind, from a bunker — as your bred machines fight an alien incursion that's learning right back.

How to play

Each round you set the rules of survival, then send a squad of autonomous automatons into an incursion you can only watch through their own sensors. Read who performed, cull the failures, protect the champions, and breed the next, fitter generation. Hold the line until the aliens adapt, then evolve past them again.

• Set the fitness priorities — damage, kills, survival, recon, efficiency, defense and diversity — with weighted sliders.
• Run the incursion and watch your squad fight on their own across the dark sensor field.
• Lock in keepers, cull the weak, and force-breed promising pairs before evolving.
• The bunker takes damage from every alien that breaks through; reach zero integrity and the campaign ends.

Controls

• Desktop: a click-driven interface — drag the fitness sliders, click unit cards to protect, cull, vault or pair them, and use the Run Incursion and Breed Next Generation buttons.
• Phone & tablet: designed around a mouse-and-click control panel, so a desktop or laptop is recommended.

Tips & strategy

• Mind the power budget — more weapons means fewer sensors and less mobility, so balance your archetypes.
• Recon matters: without scouts and relays you fight half-blind, so don't evolve a squad you can't even see.
• Vault a champion genome before a risky generation — archived genes survive even a full population wipe.
• The swarm counters your last build a round late, so deliberately diversify to dodge its adaptation.

About Adapt or Die

Adapt or Die is an original free browser strategy game powered by a genuine genetic algorithm — tournament selection, crossover, mutation and elitism — pitted against a co-evolving enemy. Built in-house, no download required.

A free, original browser game on PlayPendium — no download, no install. Browse all games →