Creatures Caves

Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution is a scientifically-accurate natural-selection video game. It allows you to experience evolution first-hand, simulated from the very first principles of evolutionary science:

Variation (every creature is uniquely defined by it’s genes),
Mutation (child creatures are randomly modified versions of their parents), and
Natural Selection (the environment affects every creature in their struggle to survive).

With these principles as it’s gameplay mechanics, Species recreates the same unguided pressures that drove the development of all life on earth over the last 4 billion years.

Whether you just want to observe, watching and studying as the tree of life constructs itself from a single species, or you want to be an active influence on the development of the species in the game, is up to you.
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Hey everyone! So, since people have been posting about videogames, I thought i'd post about one! Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution (or Species ALRE for short) is a game I heard about and played a bit over a year ago that made me think 'Hm, I think CC would really like this!' but I never got to posting about until now.
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Some important parts from the FAQ:

What is this, what even is this?

"Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution, is a realistic evolution simulator and a sandbox video game. It simulates a large population of imperfectly replicating organisms, in an environment that offers a variety of food sources, and then allows darwinian evolution to take over from there.

It also provides you, the player, with tools to interact with and observe the simulation. You can help or harm particular pheneotypes, perform your own experiments on the populations, or just observe as the Tree of Life builds itself through genetic drift and natural selection."

How is Species different from other online evolution simulators, like 3DVCE or Biogenesis?

"Species simulates large-scale, 3D organisms in an ecosystem that provides rapid, darwinian evolution. All of these features have been simulated in the past, but not in the same program:

• Primordial Life, Biogenesis, Darwin Pond and Swimbots all simulate natural selection and provide an accessable simulation, but do so amongst microscopic organisms in an abstracted, 2D petrie-dish style environment.
• Karl Sims Evolved Virtual Creatures and 3DVCE simulate large macroscopic organisms, but they do so in an environment which provides a predefined selection pressure, by only re-combining the fastest or highest jumpers for the next generation.
• Steve Grands Creatures and his current project Grandroids provide large-scale intelligent creatures affected by their genomes, but they live too long and their populations are too small for evolutionary mechanisms to be visible in real time.

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time a simulation has combined all three of these features: rapid, macroscopic, darwinian evolution."

How is Species different from other evolution games, like EA/Maxis' Spore?

[involuntary muscle spasms]

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It even mentions the Creatures series, Steve Grands, and even even Grandroids! This is how you know that someone is on a mission for this kind of game. And in case you were haven't already noticed, this game is not like Spore, but more like what it promised.

Now, the game is in Alpha atm (v. 0.8.0) which of course, promises crashes and corrupt files, but it's worth trying the game anyways!

I made a sta.sh upload for in-game srceenshots here for those of you who wish to see in-game.

If you wish to support the game, you can pre-order it for $10 USD, but if you can't afford it; you can just download it for now.

What's that? You're already convinced of this games greatness? And want to download it NOW?Here you go! http://www.speciesgame.com/