Today I got myself addicted to two new games. Well, re-addicted to one, newly addicted to another. The new one is this, a simple but very entertaining game where you can explore variation by mutation in flowers. Or, to put it more simply, where you can breed a flower to look how you want it to. There's a button that says "evolve-o-matic" where it will randomly select which traits get passed on. It's really neat to just let it run, and see what you get. Given that I've been arguing with creationists (and others who merely "doubt" evolution) recently, it amused me. Creationists always seem to make the mistake of thinking that evolution is a random proceess, and that's one of the big hangups they have-- they don't believe that randomness can 'create' the diversity we see in life. But evolution is not random-- there are environmental pressures that determine what traits get selected for. It is, in fact, far LESS of a random process than the whims of a divine creator. Anyway, this simple little simulator-- that IS random. There are no environmental pressures selecting for any particular traits, and so it will come up with different results every time you run it. If, however, you step in, you can play the role of those environmental pressures-- in a dry environment, plants with smaller blossoms do better, because they do not have the resources to sustain larger blooms, so you can select for smaller flowers, and in that way direct the evolution of the result. I thought it was neat, anyway.
The other one is a viciously addictive, not so little, surprisingly complex game called Dwarf Fortress. It's been in development for about a decade, and is coded entirely by I think two people. It has no graphics to speak of-- ASCII characters make up everything in the game, with a lowercase 'c' representing a cat and an uppercase 'E' representing an elephant, and various symbols creating the landscape and structures-- but it has a fascinatingly complicated AI.
The point of the game, in Fortress mode, is to build, defend, maintain, and turn a profit with a fortress. You begin with seven dwarves and a cart full of resources. You have to carve out a fortress, build farms, workshops, living quarters, and defenses. Several times a year merchants will arrive, so you can trade goods you have produced for supplies you need, and several times a year a new batch of migrants will arrive, the number depending on how well your fortress is doing. You will also have an increasing number of attacks, as years go on, from kobold thieves to armies of goblins, from wild animals in the outside world to cave spiders in the depths, and if you delve too deeply you can awake the forces of Hell. Your dwarves can starve or go mad from lack of alcohol, they can drown or burn in lava, they can fall down wells or walk into traps. There are a seemingly infinite number of ways to lose, and there is no way to win. As anyone who plays the game will tell you, "losing is fun!"
But the real fun, for me, is in the dwarves themselves. They each have names, relationships, likes and dislikes, a randomly generated (and surprisingly detailed) physical appearance, things they are good at and things they are not so good at, and they will adopt pets, form new friendships and relationships and, much to the player's frustration, choose which tasks they want to do. You cannot control them. You can toggle the skills that are active-- if, say, your miner won't stop carrying rocks, you can turn off the rock hauling skill, and he will stop doing that. But you cannot tell them what to do. You can create tasks, but they will decide which to do when. The miners will carve out everything you have designated to carve, but they will do so in odd patterns. If you pay attention to what they do, when given options, you can get a surprisingly clear picture of their personalities. I had one who adopted every cat in the fortress. If you set them to engraving, some will have favorite subjects-- I've seen dwarves obsessed with cheese, for example. For a simple little game, these guys are incredibly interesting.
If you're going to play it, however, I would suggest you bookmark the wiki and reference it frequently. Losing may be fun, but it helps to have a headstart. It is, as I said, a surprisingly complex game.
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