simlife game sourced
SimLife
A Maxis artificial-life toy in which the player edits plant and animal genes, landscape, and the world's physical parameters, then watches food chains and evolution play out.
parts
8 mechanics, as SimLife does themcore · 3
Food web
Designed ecosystems pair plant species with the animals that eat them, so gene edits ripple through who can feed on whom.
Natural selection
Evolution is simulated and can be steered; species whose genes fit the designed environment persist while others decline.
Trait inheritance
The player edits the genetics of plant and animal species directly, and offspring inherit those genes with variation.
supporting · 5
Habitat suitability
Lifecycle and aging
Pause and speed control
Stats dashboards
Terraforming
Players create and modify worlds and environments as well as species.
core loop
design species genes and world physics -> plants grow and animals eat, breed, and mutate -> populations boom, crash, or go extinct -> read graphs -> edit genes or environment and run again
design notes
Designed by Ken Karakotsios, SimLife moves the player's control point down to the genome: plant and animal species are edited gene by gene, and the world's physical parameters can be changed, so the toy is about running ecological and evolutionary experiments rather than pursuing goals. Where SimEarth aggregates taxa into planetary stocks, SimLife works at the scale of a landscape and its individual species, mixing exclusive designed animals such as the Killer Penguin and Monkeyphant with player-made ones. Direct gene editing matches the genome-modification proposal from run catalog-ge.