The Sapling
Very reminisce of Spore, but focus on natural selection and ecology which Spore seriously lacked. I completed all the current scenarios. So a 4 out 5 for me, and must buy for anyone who want an ecological game.
In a world filled with in-your-face tutorial, Sapling tutorial teach to basic and then allow the player learn the rest thru trying out all the functions and hover-over information. A serious plus.
The scenarios are both pleasing and challenging puzzles, and as I said before the scenarios teach the player how to use the game thru experimentation over in-your-face hand-holding flood of pop-up tutorials that plague the gaming world. Even once you completed all scenarios, the sandbox is actually challenging and very satisfying despite the fact everything is unlocked. With mutation and time-skip for sand-box, it allow you is more accurate natural selection.
– Real player with 22.0 hrs in game
Read More: Best God Game Sandbox Games.
I really love this game, I also love creating creatures to play as, or to just simply observe them evolving! Its fun to see how they would do in the wild trough a simulation. Though, this game is small and all, I’d want to be able to use a brush tool to change moisture and temperature of places, with it automatically changing the color and creating puddles or mud, maybe even a coloring tool to give the ground some color! *With this there should be an option to make the lakes not be automatically created. But also, we should be able to create our own lakes, so we can make a swamp-like environment for our creations to survive in! But really, overall I’d rate this game an 8.5/10 , one of the problems I have is lag, even with a good pc and low settings, probably due to many things moving at once all the time and the crashing. Another issue is the time cap I encountered, everything froze and I could only get past it trough a time skip, which took a whole 7 minutes to be done. But I enjoy this game alot, despite the issues. Hope you guys can develop this game to be one of the best simulation games ever!
– Real player with 19.9 hrs in game
Adapt
Adapt is a survival evolution game designed to simulate the constantly changing environments life must navigate to thrive. To succeed, your species will need to find food using a multitude of dietary strategies, seek out habitable environments, and react to changing seasons, and global climate. Your competitors will evolve alongside you, vying for food and territory to ensure their own survival.
- Live Features -
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Species’ customization through modification of genetics and physical traits to determine your evolutionary strategy.
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Numerous adaptations allow for diverse play-styles and physical characteristics.
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Plant life exhibits seasonal behaviors and growth, producing seeds and fruit, losing leaves, and acting as home for edible insects.
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Complex species AI behaviors including hunting for food, seeking mates, tracking, and hiding from predators.
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Attempt to survive virtually anywhere, from the tops of mountains, to the bottom of the seas.
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Species specialization through special abilities such as varied dietary and locomotive strategies, shells, poison, and climbing.
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Hunt or be hunted: Predators will stalk, chase, and track potential prey for an ambush, and even cooperate for an easy meal.
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Visual, audio, and scent queues, to keep tabs on potential friends, threats, and food.
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Dynamic day/night, and seasonal cycles create a living, and constantly changing world.
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Multiple reproductive strategies provide diverse species relationships and unique experiences.
Read More: Best God Game Survival Games.
Ecosystem
I have more hours than my playtime states, as I usually launch this directly when steam is turned off when I go to bed.
I am a long time fan of ecosims and evolution games. This game is very pure to those genres. It has little to no
“gamification” and exists merely for simulation sake. If you are looking for a “game” here outside of watching
fish being really bad at surviving, you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you are already familiar with other games
of this genre, like the Creatures series, this game will absolutely capture you.
– Real player with 50.4 hrs in game
Read More: Best God Game Early Access Games.
The Disco Slug team seems dedicated to breathing new life into the oldschool Maxis sim genre. First they released Empires of the Undergrowth, the spiritual successor to SimAnt, and with Ecosystem, they seem to be testing the waters (ha!) for a run at SimLife.
First thing’s first: This is an Early Access game. At this stage, it’s not terribly “gamey” at all; the only challenge currently coded into the game is raising your “life points” through the successful propagation of species and strengthening of the ecosystem. There are 8-10 tiers of Life Points through which you can progress. Each tier reached allows you to unlock three new plants, shells, or simple lifeforms (think plankton) to diversify the base of your food chain.
– Real player with 48.9 hrs in game
Species: Artificial Life, Real Evolution
Species: ALRE is a game for those of us longing for the glory days of SimEarth and though those days are long gone we can atleast see some semblance of evolution happening here.
The Good
Species ALRE gives players a wide range of options to steer how evolution will occur throughout their playthrough. There are map-wide effects such as raising or lowering the sea level, increasing or decreasing land fertility, screwing around with the global temperature and more.
Other effects are to introduce artifical selection pressure for traits that the player finds (un)desirable. This is achieved through rovers, spawnable autonomous entities that are given a single mission, to either feed or kill those with the trait in question. This allows the player enough freedom to have his creatures evolve however he wants, such as giving them enormous necks or creating a biome consisting only of hyper-aggressive huge herbivores.
– Real player with 49.7 hrs in game
I want to be clear: this is not a “game” for everyone, but if the idea is intriguing enough to you and you have some spare cash I would say take the risk and invest in it. There is nothing like this anywhere else. This isn’t some sort of half-assed early access stuff that will poorly mimic other titles then end up abandoned. This is a legit playground for anyone with a fascination with biology, genetics and evolution. If you want to make it a “game” and actively set goals you can. However, a good question to ask yourself is whether you’d be interested in letting the simulation play out without any interference.
– Real player with 45.5 hrs in game
Woodland Empire
Woodland Empire is a An ANTI-citybuilder; a natural take on the typical city building game
Instead of building roads and power lines, you control the wind, rain and sunlight to help your forest grow.
Manage, upgrade and grow your empire with the help of woodland creatures, including foxes, wolves, squirrels and birds
Harness the natural instincts of predators and prey to spread and fertilize your forest.
Tired of the hustle-bustle of the typical city builder? Retire to the wilderness and live in harmony with Nature
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Control the forces of wind, sun, rain and time
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Grow and upgrade trees and plants
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Encourage wildlife to thrive and prosper
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
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
PHYSARUM: Slime Mold Simulator
11/10 would slime mold simulator again
30 hours edit: 11/10 still would slime mold simulator again
– Real player with 34.8 hrs in game
Very cool simulation. I have mainly been using it in Video mode with ripped VHS tapes to get some cool visuals for streaming / video synthesis stuff. Dev also responded in forums and added requested features, which is always a big plus.
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
SPORE™
nice game, even if I dont play it for a year or two whenever I come back I always get the same feel as if I were playing it as a 9yr old on my moms work laptop. The replayability of this will make you keep replaying it well into… well I don’t know how old but I know I’ll probably play this game when I’m middleaged with kids and even further on when my kids are middleaged with kids. This game is such a gem and I fucking hate EA for ruining maxis this game was perfect and it could’ve been even better if it weren’t for the GREEDY CORPORATE SCUM OF EA GIVING MAXIS IMPOSSIBLE DEADLINES! THEY HAD TO CUT OUT 2 ENTIRE STAGES OF THE GAME FUCK YOU EA CORPO-SCUM! anyway best game i’ve ever played 10/10 more creative than minecraft.
– Real player with 75.9 hrs in game
step 1 : make blob | step 2: make blob have legs | step 3: make blob a Panzer | step 4: make blob make a Panzer | step 5: make blob over inflate the economy of the literal galaxy with copious amounts of marijuana (green spice)
– Real player with 63.7 hrs in game
Vilmonic
Vilmonic is a sandbox game which focuses on the evolution of alien species called anims; they adapt to environments, go extinct, go through periods of population peaks… Anims change shape as they try to find a way to fulfil their role in a niche, when faced with competition from other anims. I have high hopes for this game, and I believe the developer will continue to grow it.
Vilmonic for me is a concept game, it is still in beta as I write this, the game has potential to inspire many into pursuing perhaps even careers in genetics, or simply educating people in times where evolution has been considered controversial. It has a friendly aesthetic for new users, the control schemes can be somewhat clunky.
– Real player with 151.7 hrs in game
The ONLY modern A-Life game you can do a successful Wolfing Run.
For the young ones, that is a term coined by the Creatures series community, which has been on the net since 1999.
Wolfing is leaving your artificial lifeforms to their own devices for several hours, maybe while at work or sleeping, and coming back to a population that has changed, persisted, and survived natural selection factors. Mods are needed for Creatures 2’s bugs but the three games can theoretically support a “wild” population of creatures without player input for extended periods.
– Real player with 30.8 hrs in game
Tyto Ecology
At the time of this review, I’ve put 114.4 hours into Tyto. In the interest of disclosure - I received the base game as a gift from a friend, though I purchased the DLC on my own.
I’ve been with the game a long time - I believe shortly before the Himylan DLC came out, through to the current Cretacious DLC. In that time there’s been a lot of growth and a lot of care (even the odd spot of free content), and while it’s still not perfect, it’s a lot of fun and it’s been money more than well spent.
– Real player with 114.4 hrs in game
EDIT: I originally indicated that Tyto Ecology focuses on the more simplistic aspects of the maintaining of an environment in equilibrium. While that may be true in the limited number of “players in the game”, within those diverse players that are included there is NO shortage of complex interaction. As I expand the scope of my own TE creation, resulting in the increased need for answers to more multifaceted questions (a reflection of the environment itself, perhaps), I am constantly astounded as to just how complex the overall interaction is. Clearly not by accident, but precisely as intended. The complexity reveals itself slowly through necessity, as is done with any extremely well designed game. And these DEVS know exactly of what they speak, and say it extremely well. And with great passion.
– Real player with 35.1 hrs in game