Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox

This is a game for people who like observation over interaction. The game starts off by giving you the option to place randomly generated plants, plant eating animals, and animal eating animals. Each creature has a bunch of genes they are made of. At first those genes are hidden, but as you place research stations near activity, you reveal the hidden stats and are allowed to modify them for future plants and creatures. After you unlock new genes, you can start placing your own plants and creatures. From there you get to observe how they interact with each other. You can make plants invasive, so that they spread fast and take over, or you can make plants that spread slow but are giants, or giants that spread fast! It's really up to you and what you want to see or experiment with. So far I have really enjoyed watching the enviornment grow and change over time. The graphics may be simple, but the game is definitely enjoyable to watch. Personally I have it running on a second monitor to see what happens over time. The game is definitely not for everyone, but for those who like to watch a world grow and change, you might want to consider picking this up. PS. The leaderboard is a great addition that compares your world score with other players.

tl:dr: Another great concept with less-than-awesome implementation. The game itself is a great idea. However, the UI is clunky, graphics could use some work, and the controls are confusing and, even once learned, error-prone. It looks barely more polished than the projects I see coming out of Oregon State's online CS degree. I'm sure all the algorithms under the hood are very cool and fancy, but the gamer experience (controls, etc) leads MUCH to be desired. Neat: You can generate random organisms, see which ones succeed, and then read out their genetic values (for any genes you've unlocked) to try to mimic them/make them better. Annoying: To do so, you need to read/set each value one-at-a-time. There is no editor to allow you to view all gene settings for an existing organism, or view all gene settings for a new one. This would make a HUGE improvement to the game. Annoying: Small values changes seem to make a big difference, but the sliders are adjusted by very large values. There is no way to manually enter a specific value Annoying: Since the premise of the game is tweaking small things to make your ecosystem more effective, the feature allowing the player to to 'clone' an existing organism, make tweaks to genes, and then place is missing and sorely needed. This makes the game tedious at best. Annoying: There's a 'limit population' option that seems to cap out populations at 1500. This is required, because anything over 1500 rapidly grows and slows the game down to unplayable speeds. However the maps are so large that 1500 plants still result in sparse enough population over the area that herbivores starve. There is no way to adjust this limit to, say 2500 (which is still playable, but dramatically less sparse). Annoying: Force fields don't work as expected; plants regularly escape them... so trying to limit the play area to a smaller space (to deal with the population cap) fails over time. I got this as part of a bundle, which is always a gamble, so I'm not terribly upset about the whole thing. However, if the developer were to put a bit more time into the player experience (UI, controls, maybe some better looking models) it could be seriously amazing. Not bad for a small, indie shop, but probably not worth more than a few dollars.

I've only spent a few hours on this game so far, but it has me quite intrigued. As of late June, 2017, it is a fairly new game, and the developer has decided to allow the players to do most of the figuring out of how the game's genetics (and other factors) work. This is very much a "Sit down and sink your teeth into the mechanics" kind of game, and it is very, very much focused on genetics, evolution, adaptation, and extinction. You can create plants, herbivores, or carnivores. You 'earn the right' to control some of their genetics over time, but you can create random individuals without controlled features whenever you like. Once something starts to survive, especially if it is a plant, well there you go - good luck getting rid of all life in your place again. I really like the study of genetics. I don't want all the factors explained to me, and I want great depth and complexity. This game offers me this. For example, plant color. Sure, the graphics are simple and representative of the genetic differences... but there are visible phenotypic differences. Some plants are a different color - but there is no "color" gene. It's something else making the change. And through study and comparison of individuals, I can see where it clearly isn't, and where it probably is... and lo and behold, it is likely from the interplay of two different genes... Such studies entertain me. Real genetics are as or more complicated than this, and real genetics are not labeled as doing whatever until scientists figure them out - and even then, it is not certain everything has been understood yet. The game mirrors this well. I like it. Additionally, once you earn the right to control some genes, you can only partially control them. Natural variation extends outside of the range you can create. Want to get exceptionally low or high values? You can start in a direction, but that's the end of the "intelligent design" - it's the environment and random happenings that take over. I have noticed gene values can go negative as well. What does -1.4 "seed drift" gene mean? I don't know yet, but the game has just enough visual detail combined with genetic detail and space for individuals to play out their phenotypes that I think I can puzzle it out. I highly recommend this game for those who want to sink their teeth into a genetic drift and gene function simulator, who want to figure it out from many, many examples instead of being told.