Evolution

Keiwan Donyagard

About this game

Use joints, bones and muscles to build creatures that are only limited by your imagination. Watch how the combination of a neural network and a genetic algorithm can enable your creatures to "learn" and improve at their given tasks all on their own.

IMPORTANT: This is a simulator and not a game! If you are not interested in the concepts of natural selection, genetic algorithms and neural networks and watching them work together then this is probably not the app you're looking for! Everyone else, please continue reading :)

The tasks include running, jumping and climbing. Can you build the ultimate creature that is good at all of the tasks?

I want to stress again that there are no real objectives. Even if a creature of yours reaches 100% fitness, you don't win anything except for (hopefully) lots of excitement and joy.

IMPORTANT (again): The simulation is pretty CPU heavy so it will crash on most old and/or low-powered devices. If your device does not meet these minimum performance requirements you should NOT download this app!
If you just experience some lag you might be able to improve the fps by lowering the population size in the start menu.

For more information on how the algorithm works behind the scenes and everything else you might be interested in click on the "?" button in the creature building scene.

1.1 Update: You can now save and load your simulation progress.

There is also a Mac & PC version available for download and a browser version for you to try out on the main project website (keiwan.itch.io/evolution).

Ratings and reviews

I love the concept. It's a real fun time killer. And the mechanics of the games are good. The only thing I would add is an algorithm that can detect its orientation. See, I made a circle of bone. I was expecting it to role. But all the ai does is play Simon sais and just adds on to the previously recorded muscle movements. I think the game needs an actual learning algorithm.

Sweeeet, thanks for the update 2022!!! Great job! Creatures need to be able to set or detect orientation. Also we need to be able to zoom out more, and have more vertical viewing distance. When creating a flying creature you can't see much more than the initial viewing area preventing you from seeing the full flight. Thanks!!

Great concept, and overall fun game. The real problem comes from the glitchy muscles. The AI learns quickly that it can glitch the muscles and make the creature shoot around the map at a rate that no built creature could beat. This makes the game unplayable, since it is always a valid tactic that will always beat any real attempts. It's just a matter of time before every member of a generation will be using glitchy muscles. If the devs make it so that we could pick the members that move on it would solve the issue of glitches getting picked. Something like, touch the 2 members you like during an iteration. Then, the game can put a marker on them so we know which ones we chose. Would definitely be worth 5 stars if this were fixed.

What's new

- Added wings and a flying task
- Define a fitness penalty if certain joints touch the ground
- Assign IDs to muscles that should expand and contract at the same time
- Exiting a simulation will now load its creature design into the editor
- Bug fixes
- Stability improvements
- Fixed launch crash on Android 12