Not flashcards. A tabletop dungeon where the monster is a slide
Histology on Step 1 is recognition under pressure: one image, a few seconds, and something that looks almost identical sitting right next to it. Flashcards train recall. This trains recognition — with consequences.
The name
You type the tissue, you don't pick from four. Answers are matched on word stems, so spelling variants and plurals still count.
A d20 roll
It never decides whether you knew it. It decides how confidently it came out — knowledge is yours, the dice are only the margin.
Focus knob and objectives
You cannot name anything until the slide is in focus. At 40× the field narrows and depth of field collapses — and recognising at 4× is worth the most, because that's how you'll be asked.
Stains as schools of magic
Orcein reveals elastin, silver impregnation shows neurons, Congo red catches amyloid. Without the right bottle the field stays dull — which is the actual point of stains.
Companions and relics
A lab tech re-stains a slide for you; a professor grants a roll with advantage. Found in the dungeon, gone when the run ends.
Scheduled review
Spaced repetition compressed against your exam date, so every slide resurfaces before the test rather than after it.
Real photomicrographs, engraved world
Backgrounds are drawn as 1870s copperplate. The thing you actually diagnose is not drawn at all: 29 real slides, with author and licence printed on the journal page.
Histology first. Then the rest of the pre-clinical years
The mechanic carries over, because the problem does: pre-clinical medicine is examined by recognition, not by retelling. Recognise from a feature, name it, don't confuse it with the one beside it. What holds for a slide holds for a gross specimen and a Gram stain.
- shipped
Histology
29 slides, 5 confusable pairs, a focus knob and review scheduled against your exam date.
- in progress
Pathology
Gross and microscopic together: the organ first, then the slide. Tumour versus inflammation is the same confusable pair — the cost of the mistake is just higher.
- in progress
Gross anatomy
Bones and skull foramina: what passes through which hole. It's examined with a pointer, so it has to be drilled with a pointer, not with a list.
- queued
Microbiology
Smear and Gram stain: shape, arrangement, colour. Three features that add up to a name.
- queued
Pharmacology
Not drug lists but mechanism, target, and the drug they'll try to confuse it with.
- queued
Neuroanatomy
Sections and tracts. A lesion is a location question, and locations are recognised, not recalled.
Practice is free. You pay for time, not for answers
The practice room never runs out and never costs anything — locking revision behind a paywall the week before an exam is how a study app gets deleted. What you buy is the campaign, the scheduling, and no ads.
Full access
Unlimited descents, no ads, review scheduled against your exam date, mistake breakdowns, party of four.
Six months
Everything above, priced for a dedicated period rather than a month you forget to cancel.
Course licence
Faculty dashboard: which slide the cohort fails on, which pairs the whole year confuses. Upload your own department's scans.
Everything here is built for medical students, not for residents — and the practice room stays free for studying.