Evolution: The Game of Intelligent Life

Evolution: The Game of Intelligent Life, also known as Genetic Evolution: The Race for Intelligent Life in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

and Evolução: O Jogo da Vida in Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

, is a life simulation

Life simulation game

Life simulation games is a sub-genre of simulation video games in which the player lives or controls one or more virtual lifeforms...

& real-time strategy computer game that allows players to experience, guide, and control evolution

Evolution

Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...

from an isometric

Isometric projection

Isometric projection is a method for visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions in technical and engineering drawings...

view on either historical earth or on randomly generated worlds while racing against computer opponents to reach the top of the evolution chain, and gradually evolving the player's animals to reach the grand goal of intelligent life.

Gameplay

Players select different ages to play through, including the first amphibians through to the evolution of the Age of Mammals. Each species has points that players can spend on adapting or evolving your creature populations, which are represented by animated icons of that creature. The more points a player spends on a field for a species, the quicker it evolves, becomes better at feeding (and grows its number faster), or better at fighting off predators. When a player evolves a creature, one can pick a population to be upgraded to the evolution one chooses. Each creature has a different set of evolution paths, and some can evolve into six or more different creatures. The world grows as the game advances, with land masses drifting and terrain shifting. As the player evolves the selected creatures, the player slowly advances in the complexity of the animals, eventually reaching intelligent life. Usually, the first player to do this is the victor (standard rules).

The game starts from basal tetrapods, the very first land dwellers, amphibians. At the gain of the game, each player starts with one population of a species of prehistoric amphibian—e.g. Ichthyostega
Ichthyostega
Ichthyostega is an early tetrapod genus that lived at the end of the Upper Devonian period . It was a labyrinthodont, one of the first fossil record of tetrapods. Ichthyostega possessed lungs and limbs that helped it navigate through shallow water in swamps...

, Tulerpeton
Tulerpeton
Tulerpeton is a fossil of an extinct genus of Devonian labyrinthodont that was found in the Tula Region of Russia at a site named Andreyevka...

, and Acanthostega
Acanthostega
Acanthostega is an extinct labyrinthodont genus, among the first vertebrate animals to have recognizable limbs. It appeared in the Upper Devonian about 365 million years ago, and was anatomically intermediate between lobe-finned fishes and the first tetrapods fully capable of coming onto...

. Gradually, if the player monitors the species progress, moves them to more appropriate habitats and climate zones, the selected species will feed, breed, and prosper. From that secure population, who can then evolve more advanced and adaptable creatures, along with continental drift and climate change, will render the other, older, and more-primitive species obsolete, and those creatures will die out.

As the player advances whose creatures, extinctions may wipe out populations of some species, while others may not be affected at all. Each species has a drop-down menu, which displays all the more advanced creatures that this particular species can evolve into. Eventually, when the player reaches intelligent and advanced animals, the menu will display certain creatures who can then evolve into the standard intelligent life of civilization builders. The line of intelligent species doesn't have to be humans (e.g. Australopithecus
Australopithecus
Australopithecus is a genus of hominids that is now extinct. From the evidence gathered by palaeontologists and archaeologists, it appears that the Australopithecus genus evolved in eastern Africa around 4 million years ago before spreading throughout the continent and eventually becoming extinct...

, Homo habilis
Homo habilis
Homo habilis is a species of the genus Homo, which lived from approximately at the beginning of the Pleistocene period. The discovery and description of this species is credited to both Mary and Louis Leakey, who found fossils in Tanzania, East Africa, between 1962 and 1964. Homo habilis Homo...

, Homo sapiens). The player can also evolve other intelligent species who are fictional or highly speculative. For example, if a player evolves one of the creatures into an elephant, one can access the elephant line, and gradually evolve that elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

into Elephantosapiens which is a species of intelligent life, thus winning the game. Elephantosapiens of course, is fictional and speculative. Other species of intelligent life within the game are parrot

Parrot

Parrots, also known as psittacines , are birds of the roughly 372 species in 86 genera that make up the order Psittaciformes, found in most tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three families: the Psittacidae , the Cacatuidae and the Strigopidae...

men, wombat

Wombat

Wombats are Australian marsupials; they are short-legged, muscular quadrupeds, approximately in length with a short, stubby tail. They are adaptable in their habitat tolerances, and are found in forested, mountainous, and heathland areas of south-eastern Australia, including Tasmania, as well as...

men, and dino

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

men.

Once a player evolves intelligent life, the game ends and scores are added up and displayed, although the player who evolved intelligent life is guaranteed victory. Score points are given to players who make evolutionary breakthroughs. For example, evolving the first reptile

Reptile

Reptiles are members of a class of air-breathing, ectothermic vertebrates which are characterized by laying shelled eggs , and having skin covered in scales and/or scutes. They are tetrapods, either having four limbs or being descended from four-limbed ancestors...

, mammal

Mammal

Mammals are members of a class of air-breathing vertebrate animals characterised by the possession of endothermy, hair, three middle ear bones, and mammary glands functional in mothers with young...

, or dinosaur

Dinosaur

is worth bonus points.

The game can either be played against computer players or just alone. With opponents, the game has another side to it. Each animal has the ability to evolve defense, and other animals (predatory creatures) controlled by the players, can fight one another creature, thus wiping out an enemy population, reducing competition and weakening the opponent. To fend off these attacks, the other player can, as said earlier, evolve defenses against the opponent's predators.

Gameplay

See also