Bloodstreamer
| Bloodstreamer | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | demonpore, inc. |
| Publisher(s) | Molecular Reality Corporation |
| Platform(s) | The "Molecular Gaming Console" (planned) |
| Release | Unreleased |
| Genre(s) | Hematology |
Bloodstreamer, also written BloodStream, is a game that Molecular Reality Corporation announced in 2021 and never described beyond a single line. That line appears in the company's advertisement "We're on an epic quest": "the game of real-time blood biology across families and species".[1] It heads the list of eight "Molecular Games™" in that advertisement, and it is absent from the company's next list of titles, the 2022 memo "Early Releases on Maxine's Quest".
History
The advertisement placed the game at the top of its right-hand column, above War on the Dragon Tyrant and 2021: A SARS Odyssey. At the foot of the same page, a footnote states that the console it was written for is "strictly a scientific research tool; it is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease."[1]
The sign-up form that followed asked new members which early game they would choose. In a sample of 135 answers, seven titles received votes, and Bloodstreamer was not among them.[2] Neither was Backyard Universe, the other title dropped after the advertisement. Both of the later versions of the advertisement that survive in the company's files list the game as BloodStream™, with the same line. One of them, made for epicquest.bio after March 2025, offers it for "the MR series of Molecular Streaming Devices".[2]
Background
Blood was the first thing the company ever put through one of its pores. At the end of a working day in late 2018, with "most of teamonpore in the room", the founder wrote, "I felt that I should prove a point, and I grabbed a razor blade and bled into the flow cell." The team kept the arrangement running for days, and the next day turned it into a "microparticle turnstile". Years later an analysis of the recordings asked whether the method helped tell apart particles of similar size, and "The simple answer was 'yes'".[3] The episode is known as the rain of blood.
Counting blood cells through a hole is older than the company by seven decades. The Coulter counter, patented by Wallace H. Coulter in 1953, draws cells in salt water through a small aperture and counts each one by the brief rise in electrical resistance it causes; it became the basis of the automated complete blood count, which reports the numbers of red cells, white cells and platelets in a sample. A post from one of the company's personas called the blood count "the world's most common liquid diagnostic tests" and ended with a question: "Which of us will be the first to get our own personal Complete Blood Count on an MR device?"[4]
Some blood samples did reach the 2022 memo, under another title. Labyrinth of the Dragon Tyrant, the game about aging, lists HDL and LDL, the particles that carry cholesterol in the blood, and foam cells, the cholesterol-filled immune cells of diseased arteries.[5]
Name
The company has not explained the line about "families and species". The name puts blood in a stream three years before the company adopted molecular streaming, in 2024, as its term for molecules passing through a sensor and data passing to the people who watch it.
See also
References
- ^ a b "Scientific and technical overview". Molecular Reality Corporation. December 2022.
- ^ a b "Company records". Molecular Reality Corporation. October 2026.
- ^ Kemmishtree (March 29, 2026). "rain of blood". EQBio-OS.
- ^ Thucydides (March 29, 2026). "Bend it like Beckman Coulter". EQBio-OS.
- ^ "Early Releases on Maxine's Quest". Molecular Reality Corporation. 2022.