Summary
- Infectonator 3 turns a zombie outbreak into a real-time hive mind sandbox - chaos controlled by DNA.
- Infested Planet asks players to out-hive the hive with biotech and strategic adaptations in a real-time strategy game.
- The Swapper offers a lonely, haunting journey where players control clones and swap consciousness - a philosophical hive mind.
Hive minds in games don’t just break the rules of individuality, they rewrite the whole playbook. There’s something fascinating about assuming control over a collective intelligence that moves, thinks, and spreads like one living organism with thousands of limbs. Whether it’s a mass of meat, spores, or cold strategic brilliance, these games give players the eerie thrill of being everywhere at once.
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Some are literal power fantasies wrapped in goo, while others tap into grander cosmic horror or philosophical questions about selfhood. But what ties all of them together is the unique gameplay that comes from piloting a mind that isn’t really a "mind" at all. Here are the best games that take that idea and run wild with it.
Infectonator 3: Apocalypse
The End Of The World Starts With A Click
- Platforms: PC, Mobile
- Released: May 10, 2018
- Developer: Toge Productions
- Genre: Simulation, Strategy
While Infectonator 3 is flashy and funny on the surface, there’s a sneaky layer of brilliance in how it turns a zombie outbreak into a real-time hive mind sandbox. Players release an infection into a city and watch as it spreads, mutates, and snowballs into chaos. Except they’re not watching. They’re guiding.
Upgrades unlock smarter, faster, stronger zombies. The infection becomes less of a gag and more of a finely-tuned biological weapon. Players aren’t controlling each zombie. They’re controlling the DNA, the idea of what the horde should become. It’s hive mind management at its most chaotic, and the way the infected swarm adapts to increasingly resistant cities creates a satisfying loop of evolution and escalation.
Infested Planet
When The Enemy Is The Hive Mind, Fight Fire With Fire
Infested Planet
- Released
- March 6, 2014
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Tower Defense
- Platform(s)
- PC
Infested Planet is all about being outnumbered and still winning. Players control a team of five marines dropped onto alien-infested worlds that are swarming with hive mind creatures, fast, relentless, and mutating. But here’s the trick: players eventually get access to their own biotech that behaves just like the enemy.
Over time, tactics shift from raw firepower to controlling and manipulating the battlefield with deployable turrets, reactive upgrades, and units that function like a miniature hive. It’s a real-time strategy game with DNA on the brain, constantly asking players to adapt as the swarm mutates on the fly. Winning feels less like defeating a traditional opponent and more like out-hiving the hive itself.
Mushroom 11
If Fungal Spores Could Think, They’d Be Playing This
Mushroom 11
- Released
- October 15, 2015
WHERE TO PLAY
Nothing about Mushroom 11 behaves normally, which is exactly what makes it unforgettable. Instead of moving a character, players shape and destroy a mass of green fungal matter, guiding it forward by erasing parts of it. The rest simply grows back, adapting and spreading like some sentient lichen with somewhere very important to be.
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The hive mind here is less about control and more about persistence. Players don’t command a creature. They command an instinct. It doesn’t matter how much of it burns, crumbles, or melts, as long as there’s a fragment left, it will regrow. The puzzles feel like a negotiation between intent and biology, and solving them means thinking like a thing that doesn’t think. It just reacts.
The Swapper
Consciousness Is Optional When You Have A Million Clones
The Swapper
- Released
- May 13, 2013
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E For Everyone 10+ // Mild Violence, Mild Language
- Developer(s)
- Carlo Castellano, Tom Jubert, Olli Harjola, Otto Hantula
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 3, PS Vita, Nintendo Wii U, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
The Swapper is lonely, haunting, and brilliant. Set aboard an abandoned space station, players solve puzzles by creating clones of themselves and swapping their consciousness between them. Except there's no “self” anymore. Just bodies being used as tools. Tools that can’t argue.
Each clone is controlled simultaneously. If one walks forward, they all do. The puzzle comes in with how you manipulate the environment and lighting to control which clone is active. It’s a hive mind in the most philosophical sense, one will across multiple vessels. But then the story starts nudging in. The implications of what players are doing hit hard, and suddenly, the mechanics aren’t just clever. They’re horrifying.
Stellaris
Where You Are The Mind, And The Empire Is Your Body
Stellaris
- Released
- May 9, 2016
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ due to Violent References, Mild Language
- Developer(s)
- Paradox Development Studio
- Genre(s)
- 4X, Grand Strategy
- Platform(s)
- PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
At a glance, Stellaris might seem like just another space 4X game. But once players pick the Hive Mind civics, everything changes. There's no diplomacy, no factions, no internal politics. Just one mind, stretched across galaxies, expanding like roots through the stars. It’s not about ruling an empire. It’s about being the empire.
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Every colonist is just another neuron. Every planet is a limb. And research, growth, or war all happen without question or resistance. Players don’t negotiate peace treaties. They consume. What makes the hive mind in Stellaris fascinating is how it alters every traditional system in the game, stripping away freedom in favor of unity, and replacing “choices” with calculated instinct. It’s cold, efficient, and terrifyingly beautiful.
Carrion
A Bloody Good Time For Everyone… And Everything
Carrion
- Released
- July 23, 2020
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- Phobia Studios
- Genre(s)
- Platformer, Action, Indie Games, Puzzle
In Carrion, players don’t just control a creature; they are the creature. A tentacled biomass that rips through a research facility like a meat tornado with a PhD in carnage. What makes it so special is how it turns the classic monster story on its head. It’s Metroidvania, yes, but viewed entirely from the other side of the glass.
What starts as a small, slippery terror quickly grows into a labyrinth-spanning horror show. Players slither through vents, smash down security doors, and absorb humans to grow stronger and unlock abilities. The hive mind aspect creeps in through how the creature reacts to its environment and splits itself into smaller parts to solve puzzles. It’s never just brute force. It’s coordination, memory, and body horror rolled into a single red mass.
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