The problem with evolution-based games is that they don’t need players, that’s why you don’t see many of them (Spore doesn’t count, it’s not evolution, it’s intelligent design).
I do, however, have a favorite evolution game, if we may call it so: Gene Pool. It features a simple 2D water environment with real physics and simple swimming creatures whose phenotypes are basically multi-jointed tree-like structures, where the genotype controls the number of joints / branches and the amplitudes and frequencies of their flapping in relation to creature’s sensors.
I consider this to be an ideal evolution game: it has real physics, creatures that must perceive their environment and interact with it through physics in order to reproduce, heredity, variation, and no player input at all—except for placing walls to isolate parts of the environment, which (supposedly, I never tried that) lets you create your own little Australias.
My entire office once spent several days playing with this thing. One guy’s creatures evolved into worms that swim by writhing, mine looked like asymmetric shrimps, and the third guy evolved bird-like flappers, also asymmetric. It was amazing to watch randomly flailing creatures evolve into swimmers that actively chase food particles and mates.
I remember playing around with the precursor to it, Darwin Pond, when I was 14 or so. I was a lousy genetic engineer but I loved just watching. My favourite recording was when it started out with one red, one blue and one yellow colony and over the next 1,5 hours reds and blues were slowly improving while the yellows starved and perished until they were down to 2 swimmers; then those two suddenly bred the fastest two-legged swimmer around, and in a few minutes the entire pond was yellow, entering the normal breeding/starvation cyclic relationship with the “flora”.
This is pretty cool, and may actually serve the purpose (as something playing in the background on a big screen rather than an activity to engage directly in, but we can find other things to do in the meantime)
The problem with evolution-based games is that they don’t need players, that’s why you don’t see many of them (Spore doesn’t count, it’s not evolution, it’s intelligent design).
I do, however, have a favorite evolution game, if we may call it so: Gene Pool. It features a simple 2D water environment with real physics and simple swimming creatures whose phenotypes are basically multi-jointed tree-like structures, where the genotype controls the number of joints / branches and the amplitudes and frequencies of their flapping in relation to creature’s sensors.
I consider this to be an ideal evolution game: it has real physics, creatures that must perceive their environment and interact with it through physics in order to reproduce, heredity, variation, and no player input at all—except for placing walls to isolate parts of the environment, which (supposedly, I never tried that) lets you create your own little Australias.
My entire office once spent several days playing with this thing. One guy’s creatures evolved into worms that swim by writhing, mine looked like asymmetric shrimps, and the third guy evolved bird-like flappers, also asymmetric. It was amazing to watch randomly flailing creatures evolve into swimmers that actively chase food particles and mates.
I remember playing around with the precursor to it, Darwin Pond, when I was 14 or so. I was a lousy genetic engineer but I loved just watching. My favourite recording was when it started out with one red, one blue and one yellow colony and over the next 1,5 hours reds and blues were slowly improving while the yellows starved and perished until they were down to 2 swimmers; then those two suddenly bred the fastest two-legged swimmer around, and in a few minutes the entire pond was yellow, entering the normal breeding/starvation cyclic relationship with the “flora”.
Watching those critters creeps me out.
How common is this reaction?
ETA: No point clogging the thread with this discussion. Retracting.
This is pretty cool, and may actually serve the purpose (as something playing in the background on a big screen rather than an activity to engage directly in, but we can find other things to do in the meantime)