Олександр КузьменкоGameDev Eng
7 October 2026, 13:23
2026-10-07
Ukrainian developers announced the game Houston We Have a Spungus about the fight against the space mushroom
The newly formed indie studio Knifing Mantis, founded by Ukrainian developers who previously worked on Off The Grid, Crusader Kings III, and Stellaris, has presented its debut project — a tower defense game called Houston, We Have a Spungus. The main feature of the game is the confrontation not with classic waves of enemies, but with a single living biomass that grows across a map of millions of simulated cells.
The newly formed indie studio Knifing Mantis, founded by Ukrainian developers who previously worked on Off The Grid, Crusader Kings III, and Stellaris, has presented its debut project — a tower defense game called Houston, We Have a Spungus. The main feature of the game is the confrontation not with classic waves of enemies, but with a single living biomass that grows across a map of millions of simulated cells.
The announcement and details of the development of the dev.ua project were discussed by the studio's co-founder Oleg, who is responsible for production and game design.
In Houston, We Have a Spungus, the player must hold the line of defense against the space fungus, the Spungus. As new cells of the organism appear at the forefront with full health, the player must constantly deal damage to stop its expansion until headquarters delivers a decisive nuclear strike on the source.
There are 15 towers across five schools (Assault, Thermal, Siege, Energy, and Utility) available to defend your colonies, along with nine orbital abilities ranging from napalm to direct laser strikes. Different tower types can be combined with each other: for example, passing a projectile through a flamethrower jet increases its radius, while a laser beam can turn it into a firestorm.
The project has elements of an incremental game: for each destroyed cell, the player receives resources for a research network of over 400 permanent improvements that are stored regardless of the success of the session.
Houston, We Have a Spungus is being developed using the Godot engine. The game has its own Steam page and is scheduled for release in 2027.
Knifing Mantis was founded in 2026 by two Ukrainian developers, Oleg and Nazariy, who currently work from Ukraine and Poland. Previously, the developers participated in the development of well-known AA and AAA projects as part of larger teams, including Off The Grid, Crusader Kings III, World of Tanks, Stellaris, Speed Crew, and The Dark Pictures: Switchback VR.
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