Intelligent Design: An Evolutionary Sandbox
Science!
This is a game for people who enjoy patiently solving puzzles. Completing all the game objectives is not the end game, it’s where the game starts. Once you know how everything works, you spend time trying to develop genetic recipes for plants, herbivores, and carnivores. You can conduct experiments inside the contained forcefields. You tweak the balance until it stays stable. You observe how random mutations either help or hurt the design.
I spent an entire day developing my “stepping stone” plant recipe. Over the next few hours the plants mutated into taller “fat candles” that were better able to stand up to the stresses of wild fires and getting munched on by herbivores. This weekend I’ve assigned it as a science project for my homeschooled kid. I haven’t figured out how to get the herbivores and carnivores into a stable balance yet. I have lots of experiements left to run!
– Real player with 60.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Idler Games.
this game is interesting enough in its mechanics, to me, to give it a thumbs up, although seeing the general opinion and commentary on this game i see there are just as many reasons to give it a thumbs down, a neutral vote would be amazing here.
all in all this is a fairly simple looking game, but not very optimized for what it needs to do, especially when populations start going into the thousands the game grinds down to a snailspace or worse, this is because of the many calculations going on while the game is not multithreaded, leaving it incapable of processing its own data at a fast enough rate,besides that, and if you keep populations low enough (amount depends on your pc’s cpu power) you will have a fun time for a while.
– Real player with 35.9 hrs in game
Imagine Earth
I purchased this game some time ago and have waited a long time to review it, due in part to some issues I had with it, but also because I wanted to be fair, considering that it is an early access game. So with that being said, my review:
So I was flipping through the steam games and I came across this game called “Imagine Earth” in the simulation section, I saw that it had a demo and decided to try it. At the time the demo only had a missions available, a simple interface and not a lot in the way of content… but I was hooked.
– Real player with 41.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim 3D Games.
I really like Imagine Earth. It’s a fun, lightweight city building game, where you have to keep track of not only economical, but ecological development as well.
The game has come a long way since its appearance on Steam. I get, that a lot of people compare this to games like Anno, don’t! Anno was made by a company worth billions, this game was made by a small indy team.
And especially in times of heat waves and forest fires in North America and South Europe, never seen floods in Europe and Asia it is good to see, that some people still try to educate about global warning.
– Real player with 29.0 hrs in game
Beetle Uprising
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Very cute.
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Very relaxing.
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The evolution system is realistic.
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You can feel the power growing.
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Kind of dislike the fact that we must kill our own beetles.
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Don’t be too boldy. It is a relaxing game. Not a “Conquer as quick as possible” game.
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You end up with a mess on the floor.
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Decorations are useless and lack of potential.
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Kind of annoying how the inventories work. Lack of organization. Annoying to navigate.
Conclusion :
I am really not sure if this game is supposed to be beautiful or efficient…
– Real player with 22.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Colony Sim Real Time Tactics Games.
While at this time it is still in early access, this title has a lot going for it even with some of the drawbacks.
Its a nice little management game with some real time tactics for the combat, that grows in depth once you start playing around with the genetics to improve your combat abilities. You go from simply looking at your highest stat numbers and trying to combine them, into looking at the genetic tree of your particular units then breeding based off that to improve on your entire gene pool, which does lead into one aspect of the game that needs some work in my opinion at this stage as you spend a lot of time just sat there, combining genes then throwing the inferior beetles into a blender to make room for the next set.
– Real player with 21.3 hrs in game
Farming Life
It’s infuriating… but overall quite fun
35+ hours in, this is one of the most infuriating farming-sims that I’ve ever played. This game is NOT an idle-farming-sim like lots of people might expect. You almost constantly have to manage stuff like you have to manually select a farmer, and assign then to go sell stuff EACH time you want to sell stuff. You also constantly have to tell a farmer to wash+feed+treat your dog and cat. If you don’t take care of your dog and cat, then rats come and raid your larders.
– Real player with 35.5 hrs in game
I’m giving it a 50% thumbs up because there are quite a few problems with this game. Still if you can figure out how to play it it’s fun. I would like to write up a guide at some point but right away - ignore trying to feed the cat and dog. otherwise you keep running out of their food and have to go buy a ton more. when you ignore them their food magically appears. problem solved. For starters i am just focusing on growing things. no animals to feed. just grow and hire employees. and start off growing carrots so you can meet the first mayor’s competition and expand your land quite a bit. from there just grow stuff and hire lots of employees. get one employee to keep taking stuff to market and selling. plant some fruit trees, buy a couple of bee hives.
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
Water Bears VR
When writing this I have just finished the last challenge levels, 100% completion. I have to say this was the first VR game among the 40+ I had that I really wanted to come back to and finish. In total it took 1.8 hours more or less, it includes some short demo time for friends.
Difficulty: The game itself is quite varied and goes from super simple to mind twistingly hard at the final challenge levels.
VR Implementation: I imagine it was fun even on a screen, but in VR it just works perfectly. You move around the entire level, place pipes in 3D, watch the seemingly volumetric fluid flow. All interface parts are moved into world space and works really well, the water bears can be interacted with using your controllers, there is nice coherent graphical style making the world believable, it runs without issues on a rec spec system.
– Real player with 42.8 hrs in game
So I bought this game for my daughter who is about to start second grade. She likes the Vive and I figured that I would get something that would make her use her brain. Obviously I had to test it out to make sure it was age appropriate and so that I could explain to her how to play in case she has problems. So just one puzzle, maybe two.
Yeah, an hour later of playing and I’m already making plans to finish out all the levels while she’s at school so I don’t lose my progress when I reset it for her.
– Real player with 3.5 hrs in game
Biosys Inc
I love the idea! Can’t wait to see the final product!
– Real player with 9.5 hrs in game
As an ex molecular biologist, specialized in evolution genetics, I absolutely adore the idea. Needless to say I didn’t have much of a learning curve to get through in terms of theory, but had to learn how to play the game regardless. The tutorials are very simple and the instructions clear. Some quality of life improvments could be made obviously as this is early access, but I had a ton of fun in the 3 hours I’ve played so far. Had to start over a few times but realised I didn’t have to as I can always create new protocells. Unfortunately once I reached level 5 I encountered a glitch that put me at level 178 with a ridiculous amount of money. Still, I will follow this closely and can’t wait to see more features implemented.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
Glittermitten Grove
Okay, since this is not the “normal” game we are getting here, so i am gonna first talk about the “Main game”, the one we are sold with, the one with the game title - Grittermitten Grove. Especially for those who didn’t know the “dark secret” behind this game at the time they hit the buy button.
This game reminds me a lot of the PC98 Pixy Garden (ピクシーガーデン 妖精伝説) back in 1995. Such nostalgia! Haven’t really seen a similar genre of that type since, I’ve played Creatures and other monster breeding/town management games but none of them gives me that special feeling from Pixy Garden, until i find this game. This game is like a combination of Pixy Garden with Terraria’s suvival and terraforming touch, making it much more difficult and intriguing.
– Real player with 19.6 hrs in game
Glittermitten grove is, in and of itself, a very simply fun game with a shallow learning curve and an immediately apparent reward for learning the game’s fairly simple mechanics. It’s nice to look at, it’s original, and it’s a worthwhile time-waster if you’re into building bases and managing resources. There’s not really an endgame and the depth leaves quite a bit to be desired, but we all know that’s not the game you want to hear about.
Frog Fractions 2, or TXT World as it’s called in-game, does not measure up to its predecessor. I’ll admit, it’s got a very unique sort of charm, and the minigames that are unlocked are funny enough; the glaring issue is that the game utterly lacks the spirit and sense of absurdism and unpredictable over-the-top progression that, in my opinion, made the original Frog Fractions great. The game is interesting and engaging to a point, the difficulty is tough but fair and easy to adjust to, but rather than an imaginative journey from humble beginnings through a goofy and nonsensical plot that retains cohesion with interesting – if consistently silly – writing; TXT World serves as a sort of ascii hub through which to access games that feel like in-jokes and collectibles that reward you with cheap nonsense meant to make one laugh through its randomness and reference to pop culture. The entire time I was playing, I was left wondering, “When does the real game start?” to which the game replied, “Never.” If you’re a die-hard Frog Fractions fan and want to see what the developers did with the kickstarter money they raised, then you can spend $20 on a nifty resource manager and a collection of game jam titles, and hopefully prove my feelings about this game wrong. As it stands, however; I cannot reccomend this game. I was disappointed and saddened by this title, and while I don’t regret purchasing it, I couldn’t encourage any of my friends to spend their money on this end product. Maybe wait for it to go on sale? I don’t know.
– Real player with 16.1 hrs in game
Academia : School Simulator
I am a huge fan of Rimworld, I really enjoyed Prison Architect and plus, I’m a teacher. So I was pretty excited about this game.
I’m giving it a hesitant thumbs up on the premise that it will deliver on its promises as it progresses through EA. It’s very bare bones at the moment but I’m hopeful that it will live up to its potential as its exactly the kind of game that I would love if it were much, much bigger.
As a teacher, I do have some feedback on the academic side of things for the developers:
– Real player with 163.6 hrs in game
TL;DR
It’s fine, but not worth $20 because it has very little replay value.
Overview
Academia: School Simulator is a game. It’s challenging to call it a good game, but it certainly isn’t a bad one. I originally purchased this game after seeing it on youtube and being interesting in a school sandbox game, in which I could do a variety of things from build the best school, to making a living hellscape. Academia: School Simulator, did not meet those expectations.
Story
I don’t truly demand story in every game I play, but I feel like this could use a little… anything? I dunno even just a: Gramps left me his inheritance and I was told to spend it on his dying wish: building a school. Whatever, moving on.
– Real player with 98.7 hrs in game
Moon Farming - Prologue
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1442450/Monsters_Domain/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1355970/Jungle_House/
Tired from the same farming games on Earth? Now, take on the role of a real modern farmer on the Moon! Explore new farming possibilities in a new Moon environment. Prepare land on Moon for your base and vertical farming inside of it. For sure, it will be farming like never Before!
Explore farming possibilities over acres of land on Moon! Start from scratch with prepare land on Moon for your base. Hop onto your Cybertruck with robots and speed up the tasks, but watch out or you’ll run out of gas!
And now it is time for vertical farming inside your base!
Start growing different types of crops and plant trees with vertical technologies. Do you need a lot of acres of land? Start using tiny space with vertical farming and see impressive results from such farming on Moon!
Ride your Cybertruck and robots tp explore the vast areas offered in huge open worlds on Moon
Moon Farm is the newest and most unique farming experience ever made!
Bird by Example
What is Bird by Example?
Bird by Example is — and I say this with great passion — an RPG sandbox where all the occupying NPCs are grotesque birds who mimic your behavior with deep learning algorithms. Nothing is scripted! Everything is emergent! Be the bird you want to see in the world!
Steam has asked me to be more explicit with the game’s features:
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world
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objects
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jump
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crawl
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punch
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squawk
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bite
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physics objects
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other*
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stories??**
It’s an artificial intelligence sandbox acted out by birds with concerning musculature! Help them see, help them love, help them eat a big fat bug! Right now at this very second, the metaphysical bounds of this game hold a throng of hungry birds who wish nothing more than to be like you! Like Mama!
_*: Imprint psuedo-neurologically upon independent bird agents, using recurrent neural networks, gradient descent, and a custom-built system of semiotic metadata evocation (to afford transferrable behavior between distinct objects and agents which share characteristics along an n-dimensional space).
**: Isn’t life a story? Aren’t we all little stories, flying on this crazy rock?_
You said this was a game? Who’s Mama? I’m Mama? Who are you again?
Please pay attention. These birds are equipped with artificial neural networks that optimize themselves against your own actions! Using trendy deep learning algorithms found in a black box at the bottom of the sea, and something called ‘gradient descent’, they will try to become mathematically perfect distillations of you! It’s very computationally expensive and very math!
But what do you actually do?
Explore, follow self-imposed rules, and cultivate your flock! Tutor a bird to act just like you! By simply doing things, they will learn from you by witnessing your play! Bite an orange and you may start to see other birds doing similarly! Squawk at a another bird and watch your flock erupt into squawkage!
Oh! That’s interesting. So they have brains!?
Woah, strong word! Let’s avoid that word!
Have you ever played a game, and thought: “This is fun, but I live in such fear that I cannot enjoy it…”
Yes, I do live a life of fear! And thank you for blowing off my silly and ethically challenging question!
Yes, you do live in fear! You’re like any brain-wielding creature! But in Bird by Example there will be nothing to be afraid of! In bird world there is nothing to be afraid of! Nothing to be afraid of! Turn that brain off!
Okay. And the game is fun? It’s a game?
You must teach the rest of the birds basic life skills! If not, they will all starve to death!
Wait, you coded these birds to feel hungry but didn’t teach them how to eat?
That feature was out of scope! Please!!! Hungry!!!
Hold on… What’s a bird?
A bird is a fictional creature which came to me in a dream on a particularly cold night in February. I woke up in a sweat the next morning and quickly tried to recreate the apparition from memory. The results? Remarkable.
Earliest known footage of a “Bird” from that morning.
They were perfect. All they needed was a name.
The word ‘Bird’ is a mix of the word ‘word’ and the letter ‘b’ This is because I needed a word — or “wird” — to describe the birds. Sadly, a word using ‘a’ was already taken. It’s like gamertags!
I experimented for many weeks with flight, but no matter how much I stretched out their arms they would not.
Whatever. Doesn’t matter.