Click to play Amphipod Feast!
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Game rules

🦐 Jump into the river and embrace the aquatic adventure of a lifetime! Welcome to "Amphipod Feast" where you take control of your very own agile amphipod! 🌿

Your mission is simple: maneuver your nimble amphipod to devour as many leaves as you can before time runs out! Take advantage of the flow and dodge outsmarting opponents as you strive for leaf-eating supremacy!

But watch out - not all leaves are created equal! Seek out the highest quality foliage to score big points.

Will you emerge as the ultimate leaf-eating champion? Gather your friends and get ready to dive into the thrill of "Amphipod Feast" - where every leaf counts and victory awaits the swift! 🏆

Amphipod Feast

A mini video game
by François Keck

Amphipod design and animation
by Eva Cereghetti

Music
"very lush and swag loop" and "atrium loop" by Darren Prentice
"Over-Leveled CPU" by Cody O'Quinn

About

Amphipods are a very diverse group of crustaceans. They have an astounding range of forms and shapes and they can inhabit many different habitats.

The ones represented in our game are freshwater amphipods, which can be found in abundance throughout many rivers and small streams of the temperate Palearctic region. Amphipods can feed on dead organic material like leaves that have fallen from trees and have landed in the water.

By eating dead leaves, amphipods participate in the decomposition process. That is, they contribute to the cycling of material and nutrients, making them an important element of natural ecosystems. Yet not all leaves are the same! Like most organisms, amphipod have their preferences. They will eat some type of leaves very quickly, while they take much longer to eat other leaves. In this game, we chose to represent 3 different leaf species, based on how quickly amphipods tend to eat these species in experimental trials. From fastest eaten species to the slowest we have the black alder (Alnus glutinosa), the black poplar (Populus nigra) and the European beech (Fagus sylvatica). Eating a leaf more quickly doesn’t necessarily mean this leaf is better for amphipods (think fast food!) but nature is complicated and we needed to build a simple rule for our game 😉.

Unfortunately, being an amphipod is not all about eating leaves. Amphipods need to watch out from natural enemies too. Beside being a good food source for fish and other animals like birds and dragonfly nymphs, amphipods can also be infected by parasitic worms. These parasites can affect and weaken amphipods, so watch out for them in the game!

On the contrary, some things can truly benefit amphipods and their condition. In particular, amphipods benefit from natural habitats that are not polluted and that have little or no modification made to it by humans. So keep your eyes sharp for the Environmental Law booster.

If you'd like to know more about our research on amphipods, you can check out the Altermatt research page and the research papers published on the topic here (search for “amphipod” within the page to filter to the relevant papers!)