There’s a fairly serious problem growing outside the colony. It’s alive, it’s hungry, and shooting holes in it doesn’t actually make it go away.
Knifing Mantis has announced Houston, We Have a Spungus, a tower defense game where the enemy isn’t an army marching toward your defenses. It’s one enormous space fungus spreading across the map, cell by cell, while you try to keep it away from your colony long enough for HQ to send the really big solution. The game is planned for PC in Q1 2027.
The Enemy Is Also the Battlefield
The Spungus is made up of millions of simulated cells, and it doesn’t move around the map like a traditional tower defense enemy. It grows from its edges, spreading into new territory as it creeps toward the colony. You can blast holes through the biomass, but those holes eventually fill back in.
That creates a nasty little problem. Destroying cells buys you space, but the organism has a limited energy supply for growing and repairing itself. Every bit of energy spent filling a hole is energy it can’t use to push farther forward.
So you have a choice…Keep attacking the front line to stop the immediate threat, or start cutting into the Spungus farther back and force it to spend its energy repairing the damage. The second option could slow its overall advance, even if the colony isn’t quite as safe right this second.
There also isn’t a convenient build phase where you can sit back and arrange everything before the enemy starts moving. Towers are placed while the Spungus is already doing its thing.
Fifteen Towers, Six Slots
Knifing Mantis currently has 15 towers spread across five different schools, although only six can be taken into a run. That means choosing your arsenal is part of the strategy before the Spungus starts eating its way across the map.
Some of the weapons are exactly what you’d expect from a desperate attempt to stop a giant alien fungus. Flamethrowers sweep burning arcs across the biomass, mortars provide heavier firepower, and Beam Cutters can shoot through your own barriers. Others get a lot stranger.
Fireball Launchers throw miniature suns into the Spungus, while a Microwave tower can simply start cooking the thing. Pylon Launchers can also connect pylons together to create a lightning network across the battlefield. There’s also combinations available.
Fire a projectile through a flamethrower’s stream and you can increase its size. Hit something with a laser and it can trigger a firestorm. The towers aren’t just individual weapons, they’re pieces of a larger system that can be combined to create stronger effects.
Sometimes You Just Need an Orbital Strike
Nine abilities can also be called down from orbit, including strafing runs, napalm, laser strikes, and hellbombs. You’ll need to choose when to use them rather than simply throwing everything at the first patch of fungus you see. The Spungus comes in four different strains, each resistant to a different type of damage, so the tower combination that works beautifully on one map may be a terrible choice on another.
There is some consolation when things inevitably go wrong. Every destroyed cell earns resources, even if you fail the run. Those can be spent on a research web containing hundreds of permanent upgrades, allowing future attempts to start with a stronger arsenal.
Eventually, if you hold the line for long enough, HQ finishes preparing the nuke. One bomb, one source, one very large mushroom having a very bad day.
Houston, We Have a Spungus is currently planned for release on Steam in Q1 2027, with the Steam page and announcement trailer now live. Knifing Mantis is a new two-person studio founded by developers with previous experience on games including Off The Grid, Crusader Kings III, Stellaris, World of Tanks, and The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR.