gameplay.htmlTEXThbwr۹۹ Germs Help: Gameplay

Gameplay

To play Germs, use the mouse to move the hand around the screen. Pick up pairs of germs from the growing dish in the upper-right corner of the screen by clicking on the space between them (see the game screen layout below.) When your hand is in the correct place, a glowing cursor will highlight the two germs. (This option can be turned off in the game preferences.)
Once you've picked them up, move the germs over to the gameboard and click to release them.

You can also hit the spacebar to rotate the pair. On Mac OS X, the game supports multi-button mice: see "Controls" for further info. (Note: you cannot rotate a pair of germs all the way around, i.e., whichever germ was initially the leftmost or topmost member of the pair will always remain in one of those two positions, depending on if the pair is oriented horizontally or vertically.)
Once germs have been placed on the gameboard, you may still pick them up by clicking between any two. Arrange germs of the same color into the destabilizing pattern you see above the scorepad to make them disintegrate. Complete the required number of patterns to advance to the next level.
Starting from level 2, small corks are placed in some squares of the gameboard: a germ cannot be placed over them.

If you are too slow in removing germs from the growing dish, the dish overflows and one of the emergency vaccine syringes, seen at the bottom of the screen, is used to clear the board of all germs and start the level over. But if the growing dish overflows and you're out of syringes, you're out of luck, and the game is over.

Special features

Several special germs and power-ups also spice-up the gameplay.
You will notice that some germs, when left alone for a time, start to shake and become blurry. These germs are now "unstable," and if used in a pattern, they will cause an explosion that clears out a small portion of the gameboard.
Other germs will, at random, morph from one color to another.
A third power-up appears in the germ growing dish: the arrow. You can pick up the arrow just like you pick up a germ, and place it anywhere on the gameboard, but once you do, it will begin to spin. When it stops spinning, if there are germs on both sides of it, all of the germs that match whatever's behind the arrow will morph into the type of germ in front of the arrow.
The final power up seen in Germs appears only in higher levels. At random, a brightly-colored pill will fall onto the gameboard. The pill will be the same color as one of the types of germ, and if used in a pattern, will destroy all germs of that type.

Game screen layout

Game Screen Layout

  1. The growing dish. Pick up germ pairs from here.
  2. The gameboard. Put germ pairs here and arrange germs of the same color into the current pattern (3) to make them disintegrate.
  3. The current destabilizing pattern.
  4. The scorepad. It also displays the current level number and the patterns remaining to complete the level.
  5. The bonus timer.
  6. The emergency vaccine syringes.
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