Early Releases on Maxine's Quest

The first title's science is "biomedical gerontology and rejuvenation medicine". It was "Inspired by: 2.5d-rogue-like, with 2d hints of Gauntlet, Ultima, and Pac-Man, and 3d hints of Bard's Tale and Dungeons of Daggaroth"[sic], and its analytes are "Glycated collagen, telomeres, oxidized cholesterol, foam cells, age-matched skin and cheek cells, HDL, LDL, inflammatory markers, lysosomal preps, epigenetic age clock markers, hyaluronan".^[1] The influences span the dungeon games of the early 1980s. Roguelikes take their name from Rogue (1980), whose dungeons are generated anew for each game; Ultima (1981) and Atari's Gauntlet (1985) are seen from above, as is Pac-Man (1980), a maze game. The Bard's Tale (1985) and Dungeons of Daggorath (1982), a game for the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer whose name the memo misspells, show their corridors in the first person, in perspective. The analytes are markers of aging: sugar crosslinks that stiffen collagen, the protective ends of chromosomes that shorten as cells divide, and the cholesterol-filled immune cells, foam cells, found in the walls of diseased arteries.

The title was "War on the Dragon Tyrant" in a 2021 advertisement and "Dragon Tyrant Must Die!" on the 2021 sign-up form.^[4][5][6] The founder has said that it is named for "The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant", the philosopher Bostrom's 2005 allegory of a dragon that devours people every day, in which the dragon stands for aging.^[6][7] Its prototype in Maxine's Quest is level 7, which consists of a single wall placed outside the arena.

Raindrop Planet covers "environmental science, microbial ecology". Its inspirations are "coconuts, farmville", and its analytes "GPS-tagged soil, water, and filtered atmosphere samples, disaggregated plant cells, sea monkeys, microbial communities within a 'raindrop planet' micro-incubator accessory".^[1] FarmVille is the farming game that Zynga released on Facebook in 2009. The memo does not explain the coconuts. The "sea monkeys" are brine shrimp, sold since the 1960s as dried eggs that hatch in water. The GPS-tagged samples belong to the company's plan for a World Particle Project, a map of particles indexed by where they were found. In the 2021 advertisement the title described a different game, "adopt a complex and unique microbial civilization within a raindrop-sized vessel".^[4]

Gastromancy takes in "molecular gastronomy, nutrition, mycology, agriculture", with "reishi tea, vegetable oil emulsions, dairy emulsions, food coloring dyes" as its analytes. Its inspiration is given as "multiple depending on type of food and stage", the only entry whose influences the memo leaves unnamed.^[1] Reishi is a mushroom used in traditional Chinese medicine, and emulsions are suspensions of droplets of one liquid in another, as of fat in milk. A category of JeoPOREdy!, the company's quiz, carries the title's name; its one clue asks for the name of the discipline of molecular gastronomy, and its commentary looks forward to "our Gastromancy game".^[6]

The astrobiology title is "Inspired by: Moon Patrol meets Kim Stanley Robinson's Red-Green-Blue Mars trilogy", and its players would have run "cyanobacteria, Martian soil simulants".^[1] Moon Patrol is Irem's 1982 arcade game, in which a buggy drives across the lunar surface, jumping craters and shooting at attackers. Robinson's Mars trilogy, Red Mars (1992), Green Mars (1993) and Blue Mars (1996), follows the settlement and terraforming of the planet over two centuries. The illustration shows a tracked vehicle on rough ground with a red flower in front of it. Cyanobacteria, which made Earth's oxygen, are candidates for producing oxygen on Mars, and soil simulants are terrestrial minerals mixed to match Martian regolith.

The virology title is "Inspired by: 2d Galaga, Missile Command, Defender, and Megamania, 3d Star Raiders and Star Wars". Its analytes are "polystyrene beads with different surface functionalities, lipid particles", with a reassurance: "Focus on selective algorithm development, no real viruses involved in the early phase."^[1] The two-dimensional influences are shooting games: Namco's Galaga (1981), Atari's Missile Command (1980), Williams's Defender (1981) and Activision's Megamania (1982). The three-dimensional ones are Atari's Star Raiders (1979), flown from the cockpit, and Atari's Star Wars arcade game (1983), drawn in vector graphics. In place of viruses, players would have run polystyrene beads and lipid particles of similar size.

The title began as "2021: A SARS Odyssey", after Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, and its illustration pairs a cluster of virus particles with a wheel-shaped space station. By 2026 it had become SARS Invaders, a site of that year explaining "FKA 2021: A SARS Odyssey but we didn't ship in 2021 and had to change the name!"^[5] The founder has called the new name "a pun on Space Invaders", the 1978 arcade game.^[6]

The genomics title is "Inspired by: Combat, Gunslinger". It has the longest list of analytes, beginning "Strawberry and spinach DNA, histones, intact nuclei, spermatozoa, HMW DNA, nucleotides, telomeres, G-quadruplexes, XNA, miRNA" and continuing through nine more, among them DNA origami, "CRISPR-dCas9 complexes on DNA" and "mi-RNA-21".^[1] Combat (1977) was the cartridge packed with the Atari Video Computer System, a game of two tanks shooting at each other. Gunslinger is the name under which Sears sold Atari's Outlaw (1978), a duel between two cowboys. Both are games for two players facing each other. The illustration shows a cowboy in a red neckerchief before a wall of the letters TGCA. The analytes run from DNA that a player could extract in a kitchen, from strawberries and spinach, to a CRISPR protein disabled so that it binds DNA without cutting it.

The science of DogeBio is "canine biology", and its analytes are "Dog biosamples, rapamycin metabolites, dog food". It was "Inspired by: An actual game of fetch with our Chief Quadruped Officer, who was named 'Doge' IRL years before the coin was a thing."^[1] Of the memo's inspirations, it is the only one that happened to the company itself. Dogecoin, the cryptocurrency named after the Doge meme, was launched in December 2013. Rapamycin is a drug that extends the lives of laboratory mice and has been tested as a treatment for aging in pet dogs. The 2026 plan sketched a wrapper for the game in which the voltage knob of Maxine's Quest is labeled "Sniff intensity" and the zapper "FLUSH".^[3] A JeoPOREdy! clue under "Doge Bio" asks for lysozyme, the antibacterial enzyme of saliva, and its commentary adds that "our DogeBio game lets you molecularly stream right from your pet's playful slobber!"^[6]

The last title's science is "in fimo biology". In place of "Inspired by" its entry has "Style: Tempest meets Qbert but with giant alien space-gods who poop." Its analytes are "Poop! From diverse species, irradiated to destroy biohazards in samples we ship. Locally sourced by players as well with full protocols yet to be determined. Explore the sacred stinky!"^[1] Tempest is Atari's 1981 arcade shooter played from the rim of a geometric tube, and Q*bert is Gottlieb's 1982 game of hopping down a pyramid of cubes. In fimo is Latin for "in dung", on the pattern of in vitro and in vivo. Feces carry much of the gut's microbiome, which is why stool samples are used to study it. The illustration shows a toilet floating among stars beneath a flying saucer.