IвЂ™m surprised how well the game sold, I just checked, 400k in the first year and then sequels and various re-bundlings. In fact, you could purposely teach the wrong vocabulary to one Norn, introduce it into the general population, then watch the misunderstandings cascade.

TheyвЂ™d talk to eachother but unlike the Sims their conversations had some meaning. Teach the Norns words and theyвЂ™d teach those words to their offspring. You could manipulate objects, slap or tickle, and talk with the keyboard. Under the hood was a neat system with genetics, neural nets, and a simple biochemistry. There was little scripting so you never knew what to expect. ItвЂ™s something like the Sims, but the вЂNornsвЂ™ were much more independent and in general the games were way more on the sim side - like old school Maxis games. Anyone here played Creatures?Д¬reatures was one of many life simulators, or pet simulators, that peaked in the late 90s.

There were a bunch of threads on how people were disappointed by Spore or excited by creature in Black and White. There weren't Creatures threads on Ars to bump. The creator of the Creatures games has a new solo project funded through Kickstarter. I don't think I've seen this on any gaming sites but I bet there are people here who are interested. I posted this at a gaming forum I frequent, but I thought the Ars crowd was a good fit too, especially as there's only a couple days left if anyone wants in the beta.

Games like spore creature creator