Summer 2026

Gardening and game dev

Hey everyone!

When I started this newsletter, I promised to respect your inbox and only write when I actually had something to say. I don’t post for the sake of posting, just to keep up some arbitrary schedule. It’s been a few months since my last post, but it’s not for lack of news. There’s been so much to say that I haven’t managed to stop and actually say it, and a bunch of stuff I meant to share in spring is old news now. So today I decided to pause and actually share some updates while they’re still fresh.

Cellscape Progress

Development is going very well, and I’m still feeling confident about an early access release later this year.

Cyclidium is the newest and cutest member of the Cellscape ecosystem

Here’s a short summary of some of the major developments since the last post:

• Created a standalone tutorial to teach the basics of the game

• Added in-world text popups for events (eg. “Double growth!”) so it’s easier to understand what’s happening to your character

• Added three new viruses that can infect your character and clones

  • The new ciliate, Halteria, eats viruses and can cure your character

• Adjustments to scale, growth, and movement of some older creatures

• Introduced an adorable new ciliate, Cyclidium, which is attracted to disturbances and is a heavy bacteria feeder

  • Cyclidium also eats biofilm bacteria, which causes biofilms to decay

• Working on a new system for spawning bacteria, using nodes of different types such as decaying plant fragments

• Started work on a major new mechanic: fungi!

Soil Fungi Have Finally Arrived in Cellscape

An early prototype of fungal hyphae in Cellscape

Fungi are the last major game mechanic that I want in place before early access release. Just like real fungi, these will have significant impacts on both living and nonliving aspects of the soil habitat.

There is so much potential for new game mechanics with fungi, but there is only so much time left before the initial release. I’ll start with a framework of the minimum mechanics for early access, and then continue to develop these further after the game is out.

Garden Revival

I had no real plans for gardening this season, since I knew I’d be busy with Cellscape, and my love of gardening has been mostly dormant since we moved here at the end of 2021. I’d like to tell that story sometime, but it’s a bit too much for this post.

Anyway, our property is a small hobby farm, and this past April during some barn renovations I noticed a pile of step-in fence posts, typically used for sheep fencing. We have six chickens, and I realized these posts with chicken wire would be perfect for creating a semi-secure space in the old horse pasture for them to forage in.

After setting up the new fence, I thought it would be nice to add a little compost bin for the chickens to dig through. Then I thought maybe it would be nice to put a little garden box in there too. One thing lead to another, and suddenly I have a big garden again, this time with chickens in it!

Overhead view of the new garden, taken from standing on the roof of the chicken coop. In April this was all just grass, formerly a horse pasture.

Five years of pent up gardening energy burst out all at once. It was like I woke up from a long hibernation. I dug out my old seed collection and started sowing seeds, most of which expired years ago. The garden kept expanding as I found more interesting seeds to plant.

Chickens will gladly destroy any garden beds they have access to, so the main planter boxes have removable fence panels that I can unhook and move to the side to keep the chickens out while I work on them. Some beds are meant for the chickens to forage in later, and are fenced temporarily while the plants get established. In some cases I caged individual plants and let the hens kick through the mulch all they want, which helps keep weeds and slugs down.

I can’t tell you how lovely it is to be in the garden with chickens roaming around. Sure I step in some poop, but it’s so worth it! I have my morning coffee out here and even work here if I can (I’m writing this in the garden!). It helps me relax mentally after intensive game dev, and offers much needed movement and fresh air after long hours at the desk. Not to mention all the benefits to the chickens and the garden itself.

I could write a lot more about the garden and chickens, but is this something you’d be interested in? I could do a full garden walk through, maybe talk about what it’s like gardening with chickens and how to accommodate them while keeping crops safe. Let me know if you think that would be interesting!

Compost in the Microscope

I’ve been working on a new system for bacteria spawning in Cellscape, and decided to take a look at some compost in the microscope and get some references for bits of decaying organic debris.

Compost in dark field is quite beautiful!

Fragments of grass in the microscope look like glass art.

Here are some of the new game pieces I drew after looking at the compost in the microscope. These are bits of plant material with stages of decay, which will spawn bacteria for your character and other protozoa to feed on.

Some new art pieces for Cellscape.

I like adding a few pieces of grass to a sample, and letting it sit for a couple of days. It boosts populations of bacteria and protozoa like crazy, and you can always find something interesting when doing this.

In this case I found something very interesting. I have no idea what’s going on here!

First, I noticed these little colonies of what I think are choanoflagellates drifting around.

Then I saw this amoeba, which appears to have one of these colonies attached to it. I thought maybe they got stuck together, or the amoeba tried to capture them and hadn’t managed to swallow them up.. not sure what to think.

Then, when re-watching this video of a Colpoda I took from the same sample, I noticed a whole bunch of amoebas in the same situation.

I didn’t see them when I recorded the video because I was focused on the Colpoda, but look at them all! Here’s a still from the video to get a better look:

Colpoda and many amoebas with colonies of possibly choanoflagellates stuck to them. 100x magnification.

If anyone knows what’s going on here, or has any theories, please let me know! I’m so curious.

Lakehead University Alumni Spotlight

Last month I had the honour of being featured in Lakehead’s Alumni Spotlight. You can read the article here.

Cellscape is now on Facebook

I decided Cellscape should probably have a Facebook page. If you’re on Facebook, feel free to follow here.

Join us on Discord

Discord is a nice space for informal communication and small updates between newsletter posts. We have space for general chats that can be about anything, but of course we tend to talk about microscopy a lot since that’s what most of us there have in common so far. If you don’t feel like chatting, it’s perfectly acceptable to lurk and just follow along.

Everyone is welcome, hope to see you there!

---

That’s all for now, thank you so much for being here!

Wish you all the best,

Kate

---