Nutrient patch
Active hyphal tip
Reinforced cord (heavy flow)
Dormant strand
This top-down 2D companion grows a fungal mycelium the same biologically-grounded way as the 3D original — hyphal tips extend from germinating spores, bend their path up the local nutrient gradient (chemotropism), branch harder when food is scarce, and fuse together wherever two threads from the same colony cross (anastomosis) — but it also tracks what happens after a tip finds food. Every strand of the network carries a live transport value: the sugars and water flowing back toward the spore they came from, visualized as travelling pulses. Strands that stay busy thicken and glow gold into reinforced rhizomorph cords, exactly like a real fungal colony hardening its most-used highways, while strands that stop carrying flow fade into thin dormant threads rather than disappearing — and can sprout a brand new foraging tip if the growing edge stalls near untapped nutrient, the same reallocation strategy real mycelium uses to redirect growth toward richer ground. Adjust nutrient density, branching rate, growth speed and pruning speed to see how aggressively the network reinforces or abandons its own transport routes.