At least there’s another game in Borderlands 3 to play

There’s a new mini-game in Borderlands 3. If you go to the infirmary in Sanctuary III, you can find an arcade machine with Borderlands Science, a matching puzzle game that can unlock cosmetic doodads for your character as well as some in-game temporary XP or money boosts. It’s all in the name of real science, as Mayim Bialik explains in the intro video. The simple matching game ties into the Microsetta Initiative’s effort to map strands of DNA in poop. Yes, dookie. It turns out computers aren’t great at lining up the sometimes vague data from our doo-doo, and players can contribute to the task by simply being better at guessing.

It’s not always possible to line up all of the tiles correctly, but attempting these puzzles is still helpful as you’re identifying errors in real-world computer analyses.

Congratulations, vault-hunter. You’re a real science person now.