Twelve cursed critters.
One thumb. Ten minutes to survive.

A bullet heaven for your phone. You never aim, you never tap to attack — you drag your thumb, and the weapons do the rest. Everything you pick up stacks, and somewhere around minute seven it stops being a game about dodging and becomes a game about how much screen you can fill.

Coming to the App Store Meet the critters

Free to play · No gacha · No subscription

How it plays

Move. That's the whole control scheme.

Put your thumb anywhere on the screen and a joystick appears under it. There is no fire button, no aim, no menu to open mid-fight. Every decision you make is a decision about where to stand — and, at every level-up, about which of three upgrades to take.

A floating joystick

Your thumb never hides the action. Drag from anywhere, let go anywhere — the stick follows you instead of sitting in a corner.

Three cards, one choice

Enemies drop XP gems. Every level hands you three upgrades: a new weapon, a level on one you own, or a passive. Four weapon slots, four passive slots — you cannot have everything.

Evolutions, not upgrades

Max out a weapon, own the right passive, and something new shows up in your cards. Thirty-six of them exist. A run that finds two is a run that ends very differently from one that finds none.

The twelve

Every critter is a different game.

Not a skin and a stat line. Each one owns a starting weapon, a power that rewrites how the whole arsenal behaves, and a curse that takes something real away. Each one also owns its world — its own arena, its own bestiary, its own music. Three are yours on install; the other nine are unlocked with gold or by pulling off something specific.

Sunday Gravy

Claws · The Kitchen

Power · Flayed: Hits far harder in the direction he is walking.

Curse: Pickup radius halved. He has to walk to his gems.

Private Zero

Machine gun · The Bedroom Front

Power · Suppression: Gains fire rate at every single level, with no cap.

Curse: Ten fewer HP than anyone else, from the first second.

Cheap Cologne

Stink aura · The Landfill

Power · Marinade: Any zone of his soaks enemies permanently — and soaked enemies conduct everything else you own.

Curse: Enemies spawn 20 % faster. The crowd is the point.

No-Shirt Eddie

Fried eggs · The Battery Farm

Power · Hatch: Every blast can hatch a chick that fights for you for ten seconds.

Curse: Twenty percent less max HP. The chicks are also your armour.

Birthday Vic

Shotgun · The Big Top

Power · Cream Pie: Every critical explodes and coats whatever it touches in grease.

Curse: Each hit rolls its own damage, from 70 % to 140 %.

Old Detroit

Shield · The Old Aquarium

Power · Counter: Every hit the shield eats reloads all of your weapons at once.

Curse: Heavy. Six tenths of a second to start moving or change course.

Wet Willie

Acid · The Night Garden

Power · Sediment: Anything standing in his slime takes 30 % more damage from everything — his acid stops being a weapon and becomes a floor.

Curse: Speed upgrades give him half of what they give anyone else.

Johnny Voltage

Lightning · The Rooftops

Power · Arc: One hit in five jumps to two more enemies — and jumps twice as far through anything wet.

Curse: Armour does nothing for him. Not reduced — nothing.

One-Way Ray

Orbiting pans · The Cage

Power · Momentum: Converts movement speed straight into fire rate.

Curse: Stand still for two seconds and his fire rate halves.

Sawdust Jack

Turret · The Dam

Power · Foundations: Inside his turret's radius everything he owns fires 25 % faster and hits 15 % bigger.

Curse: Outside it, he loses a fifth of his damage. A critter who holds ground instead of running.

Big Mama Red

Familiars · The Anthill

Power · Workers: Every time a weapon fires, each familiar has a one-in-four chance of firing the very same thing.

Curse: She never attacks herself. With no familiars, she does nothing at all.

Two-Claps

Boomerang · The Jungle Temple

Power · Ricochet: His shots bounce off the corridor walls instead of vanishing. Fire at a wall, hit the horde in the back.

Curse: The pincer rings close in twenty seconds early.

The arsenal

Twelve weapons. Thirty-six ways they end.

Each weapon has three evolutions and each one wants a different passive. The same claws become a vertical scythe, a blood whip or a shredder depending on what else you took — which is why the cards you refuse matter as much as the ones you take.

Vertical ScytheClaws + Size

MinigunMachine gun + Fire rate

NovaAura + Size

ThunderstormLightning + Fire rate

Colossal EggFried eggs + Damage

War BoomerangBoomerang + Damage

CarouselPans + Speed

Vampire FamiliarFamiliars + Lifesteal

The run

Ten minutes, and it never lets up.

The clock is the difficulty curve. Nothing is random about when the floor turns against you — only about what you have in your hands when it does.

0:00
The corridor opensOne weapon, full HP, a slow trickle of critters.
2:00
First eliteA single fat one. Kill it and it drops a healing baguette.
3:30
First ringFourteen sprinters spawn in a circle around you. Find the gap.
4:30
Second eliteNearly three times the health of the first.
6:40
Second ringEighteen this time, and the corridor is already full.
7:00
Third eliteIf your evolutions haven't landed by now, they won't save you.
8:40
Third ringTwenty-two, on top of everything else on screen.
9:00
Fourth eliteEleven times the health of the first one. Plus the horde.
10:00
The bossIt spawns reinforcements and closes rings of its own. Beat it and the world is yours.

Gold outlives the run

Whatever you collected stays after you die. It buys the five permanent upgrades of the Pantry — and the nine locked critters.

A chest every day

One free chest per day, no strings. Open it and go — or watch a short ad to triple it, entirely your call.

Creative mode

Win once and a sandbox opens: pick your weapons, your passives, your level, and go break the game on purpose. It keeps its scores separate.

The deal

Free, and honest about it.

The whole game is winnable without spending anything. Ads are never forced on you — you press a button or you don't — and paying only ever buys time or removes the ads. Nothing is exclusive to money.

Every critter is earnable

Gold or a specific feat unlocks all nine. No paywall in front of content.

Ads are always a choice

Three optional spots: a second chance, doubled gold, a tripled daily chest. Never mid-run, never on a timer.

Plays offline

Your save lives on your phone. No account, no login, no server telling you when you can play.

No gacha, no loot boxes

No random pulls, no pity counters, no currency you buy to spin something.

No subscription

No battle pass, no season, nothing that expires because you stopped playing for a fortnight.

No account, no tracking of you

We never ask who you are. See the privacy policy for exactly what the game does send.

The studio

Micro Games

Micro Games was founded in Paris by two brothers, Justin and Valentin Reverdi, and is published by VR Holding. Micro was their cat. He died in the summer of 2025, the studio carries his name, and he is the shape sitting in the beam of the logo.

Cursed Critters is built in the open: every critter is a photographed object turned into a monster, every icon is modelled in plasticine and shot under a single lamp, and the whole thing runs on a hand-written simulation rather than a game engine.