Eat & Evolve: the complete guide

What Eat & Evolve is

Leviathan: Eat & Evolve is the second Leviathan game, and the opposite of the first. In Merge & Evolve you keep a whole reef. Here you are one fish. You start as a Fry in open water, eat anything smaller than you, run from anything bigger, and every species you reach makes you the hunter of fish that were hunting you a minute ago. The line on the title screen sums it up: eat, grow, become the Leviathan.

A run has one life. Your health drains all the time and eating is the only thing that refills it, so you can never just hide. That pressure, and the fish one size up that come looking for you, is what keeps a run tense from the first bite to the last.

Controls

A dash throws you forward at 2.4 times your speed for about a third of a second, then needs 1.25 seconds to recharge. The ⚡ button dims while it recharges. Dashing is how you escape, how you catch fish that are almost your size, and how you smash treasure chests open.

The ten species

Every run climbs the same ladder. The number is each fish's size, which is what decides who can eat whom.

Each species has its own growth bar on screen. Fill it and you evolve into the next one on the spot. The Cosmic Whale, the top of Merge & Evolve, is not part of this ladder: here the Leviathan is the summit.

Who eats whom

Size is everything, and the game compares yours with every fish you meet:

• Under 80% of your size: food. Swim into it and you swallow it.
• 80% to 96% of your size: a tough catch. Touch one at normal speed and it bites back and bursts away. Dash into it instead and you land a Big Catch, which pays 1.6 times the pearls.
• More than 105% of your size: a hunter. Any fish from the Clownfish up that is that much bigger than you can eat you.

The bigger the fish you eat, the more it fills your growth bar and your health. Something far smaller than you is only a snack. Fish that are close to your size are real meals, which is why the Big Catch is worth the risk.

Health, and why you can never stop

Your health starts at 100 and drains every second. The drain starts gentle while you are a Fry and gets faster with every species you reach, so a Manta Ray burns through health far quicker than a Clownfish. Below 28 health the drain slows to about half, which gives you one last chance to find a meal. Being bitten by a hunter takes a big chunk at once.

Combos, fever and pearls

Every fish you eat pays pearls. Eat again within two seconds and your combo grows. Each step adds 15% to the pearls of the next bite, and the counter calls out Combo at 3, Great at 5, Amazing at 8, Insane at 12 and Unstoppable at 16.

Reaching a combo of 8 starts Fever: twelve seconds in which everything you eat pays double. Fever stacks with every other bonus, so a combo kept alive through a school of small fish is the fastest way to bank pearls.

About one fish in twenty is born with a rare bloodline: Golden, Albino, Abyssal, Aurora or Crystal. They glow, and they are worth chasing. A rare fish pays five times the pearls, fills your growth bar 1.8 times as fast and restores 12 extra health.

Dangers

Spikefish

Spikefish kill you on touch, whatever your size. They cross the sea in waves, and each wave paints red lanes on the screen about 1.7 seconds before it arrives. Get out of the red. Only once you are the Leviathan can you eat a Spikefish yourself.

The Stalker

From the Neon Tetra on, once your growth bar passes 60%, a fish one size up comes looking for you specifically and shouts that it has found you. It is a little bigger than you and it keeps coming. Evolve and the tables turn: it gives up and swims off.

Reading the shouts

Fish talk. Hunters shout in red jagged bubbles when they come for you, prey squeaks in white ones, bumping into something too big says so, and slipping past a bite at the last moment pays a Close One bonus.

Treasure

Every run hides treasure across the sea floor:

• Five wrecks. Each has a chest in its hull, and a hull chest always holds a relic.
• Eight loose chests. Dash into one to smash it open. Three in ten hold a relic.
• Fourteen giant clams. They open and close. Swim in while one is open to take its golden pearl, which adds growth and health.

There are three relics, and each lasts a set time:

Becoming the Leviathan

The Leviathan is the top of the ladder. Fill its growth bar once more and you become the Apex Predator: from then on everything you eat pays double. The run still ends the way every run ends, when your health runs out or something gets you, so the Apex is where the big pearl totals are made.

Second Wind and the end of a run

When you die, the game can offer one Second Wind per run: you come back where you fell with 70 health and three seconds of safety. It is paid for by watching an optional ad, or, once you have played for a few minutes in total, with 300 of your banked pearls. You have five seconds to choose.

The summary screen then shows how long you survived, how many fish you ate, your best combo and any rare fish you caught, along with the pearls you earned. The game remembers your pearls, your best species and your number of runs in your browser, separately from Merge & Evolve.

Quick tips

1. Eat in chains. Small fish swim in schools. Sweeping through one keeps the combo alive and gets you to Fever.
2. Save the dash. A dash on cooldown is no use when a hunter turns on you. Spend it on a Big Catch or a chest only when nothing large is close.
3. Watch the bar, not just the fish. Past 60% the Stalker is coming. The safest answer is to eat hard and evolve before it reaches you.
4. Respect the red. Nothing in the sea is worth crossing a Spikefish lane for. Grab a Moon Pearl if you see one.

Ready? Play Leviathan: Eat & Evolve.