Petri
Free · play online in your browser, no download
An incremental game in a petri dish that is alive, made by a microbiology graduate: culture biomass, edit genes and grow the culture into a whole biosphere. The developer says most of the code was written by Claude.
Official site hawke-nz.itch.io, verified Nov 3, 2026. The developer's own itch.io page (Hawke-NZ), linked in the developer's Reddit post on r/incremental_games.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — itch.ioitch.ioEarly access · Listed as “In development” on itch.io; the page says balance may still changeFree
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Desktop · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Petri
Petri is an incremental game about genetic engineering, played in a dish that is alive. You click the agar to culture Biomass and buy organisms that grow on their own, 15 in all, from E. coli and yeast up to organoids, xenobots and a Gaia seed, each with its own shape and movement: amoebae hunt stray bacteria, slime mould grows veins toward its food, yeast buds, cyanobacteria give off oxygen bubbles, and phages burst the cells they land on until you pop them. A branching Gene Lab offers either/or choices, each organism can get a CRISPR edit you can see in the dish, grant proposals set timed goals, and the vessel grows from a petri dish to a flask, a bioreactor, a greenhouse, a lake and finally the whole biosphere. Two prestige layers, three lineages (Archaea, Fungi or Plants) and challenge modes follow, with 71 achievements; the page puts the ending at 50 to 80 hours at a relaxed pace, with offline progress. It is played with the mouse only and saves automatically, with save export. The developer, Hawke-NZ, a microbiology graduate, says most of the code was written by Claude and directed, playtested and reviewed by the developer, that the organism art and all sound are produced by code Claude wrote, and that the design, balance and science are the developer's own. Made with Godot; free in the browser on itch.io or as a Windows download, in English, and listed as in development.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe AI disclosure in the developer's post on r/incremental_games (4 Nov 2026, UTC) says Petri “was built with Claude (Anthropic’s AI assistant) as a coding partner”: “most of the code was written by Claude, directed, playtested and reviewed by me.” Per the same disclosure, the organism art, vessels and textures are drawn procedurally by code Claude wrote, with no image-generation models; all sound is synthesised at runtime by code Claude wrote, with no AI audio models; and the in-game text was drafted with Claude from the developer's notes and edited by hand. The game design, balance targets and microbiology are the developer's.
- Developeritch.io page: “Made with the Godot Engine. Developed with the help of an AI assistant (Claude).” AI disclosure: Code, Graphics, Sounds and Text (art and sound generated by code an AI wrote). — itch.io
Made in Godot. Per the developer, Claude wrote most of the code under the developer's direction and review; the organisms are drawn procedurally to match real micrographs and all sound is synthesised by the game, so no image or audio models were used. The developer describes Petri as a side project next to a more realistic simulation of microbial evolution.
- Engine / framework
- Godot
- Languages
- Not disclosed
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“Code: most of the code was written by Claude, directed, playtested and reviewed by me.”Verification notes: AI use from the AI disclosure in the developer's post on r/incremental_games by u/No_Ticket_5074 (4 Nov 2026, 08:06 UTC), read from the Arctic Shift Reddit archive, and the itch.io page (published 4 Nov 2026, 06:10 UTC; status In development; HTML5 and Windows; made with Godot), both re-read on 5 Nov 2026. The post names Claude, not Claude Code, and gives no share beyond “most of the code”, so no AI code share is recorded. The Reddit account and the itch.io account Hawke-NZ are tied by the post linking the page in the first person (“I've just put it up on itch”); both describe the developer as a microbiologist. The sound is synthesised by the game's own code, not by an AI model, and nothing is described as generated by AI during play; a check of the web build's shell script found no AI service calls. Not to be confused with PETRI, an unrelated TapTap game by a different developer. Team size and location are not stated. itch.io rating 1.0 from 2 ratings on 5 Nov 2026, a day after release; itch.io shows no download count. The game was not played.
Development history
Published on itch.io (06:10 UTC) and announced on r/incremental_games two hours later.
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
itch.io
Free in the browser (HTML5), mouse only; a Windows build is offered as a name-your-own-price download, and saves can be moved between the two by export.
Not publicly available: Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Petri by Hawke-NZ itch.io | Store page | Nov 4, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| I'm a microbiology graduate and I made an incremental game about microscopic life in a petri dish: Welcome to Petri. (r/incremental_games) Reddit (u/No_Ticket_5074) | Social post | Nov 4, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) Hawke-NZ | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
