Framsticks Artificial Life

Name: Framsticks Artificial Life
Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Author: TOYSPRING

Evolution of virtual creatures

Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad

5 Ratings
Ages

4+
Years
Category

Education
Developer

TOYSPRING
Language

EN
English
Size

12.3
MB

This app lets you play with simple simulated creatures and their evolution. It features a few genetic representations ("languages"), where each symbol in a genotype defines some characteristic of a creature (a "phenotype"). Each genetic representation has its own methods of mutation (modifying small parts of a genotype) and crossover (exchanging genes of two parents to produce an offspring). The performance of each creature is evaluated in terms of speed on land, speed in water, and height of its center of mass. These criteria can be set as fitness. Since you have mutation and crossover available to change genotypes randomly, you can run an evolutionary process and see how fitness in the population increases. You can also guide evolution according to your preferences by making creatures you like reproduce and generate their random variations. If you understand a genetic language, you can even edit genes manually by deleting and adding genetic symbols, and this way build a creature you want or improve an existing one. The app features some quests to help you familiarize with genetic languages and the properties of evolution such as convergence, diversity, selection pressure, the influence of mutation rate, or the population size. Advanced users can even try their own formulas for fitness, for example to maximize both height and speed simultaneously, or to add even more criteria. Some demonstrations are included as well that show the concepts of directed (external fitness) and undirected (internal fitness) evolution, mutation, swarming, and communication. This app is based on the Framsticks simulator. You can learn more at http://www.framsticks.com/

Ratings & Reviews

4.4

out of 5

5 Ratings

Very Cool Concept, But Very Difficult to Play
09/14/2024

ggshz
I came across this game recently while looking for some life simulation games, and I instantly saw the potential in this game. I love games like this that are about evolution, artificial life, and biology. However, I found this game’s mechanics and gameplay very frustrating to use. It may just be a skill issue, but things such as editing genotypes, settings, and just how to generally play the game. The lack of explanations/walkthroughs makes it difficult to understand what each feature does and how exactly to use it. I think if this game was a little fleshed out, adding some explanations for the user, it would be extremely good. I think a game like ‘Evolution: Learning Creatures’ would be a great baseline for this game in effort for it to be used effectively by the user. I’m going to give this game 4 stars because it was genuinely fun messing around with my created creatures in the sandbox, but I also don’t want to kill the rating of this mostly underground game with a 3. In reality, I would really give it closer to a 3.5. I would love to see some future improvements to this game down the line!

Developer Response
Thank you for your remarks! This is actually more of a simulator than a game, and we agree that it is demanding and complex – especially when approached as a game 🙂
Very Cool Concept, But Very Difficult to Play
09/14/2024

ggshz

I came across this game recently while looking for some life simulation games, and I instantly saw the potential in this game. I love games like this that are about evolution, artificial life, and biology. However, I found this game’s mechanics and gameplay very frustrating to use. It may just be a skill issue, but things such as editing genotypes, settings, and just how to generally play the game. The lack of explanations/walkthroughs makes it difficult to understand what each feature does and how exactly to use it. I think if this game was a little fleshed out, adding some explanations for the user, it would be extremely good. I think a game like ‘Evolution: Learning Creatures’ would be a great baseline for this game in effort for it to be used effectively by the user. I’m going to give this game 4 stars because it was genuinely fun messing around with my created creatures in the sandbox, but I also don’t want to kill the rating of this mostly underground game with a 3. In reality, I would really give it closer to a 3.5. I would love to see some future improvements to this game down the line!
Developer Response May 25
Thank you for your remarks! This is actually more of a simulator than a game, and we agree that it is demanding and complex – especially when approached as a game 🙂
Great, but buggy
04/17/2024

OH ELM
This app is super amazing for what it’s worth and works well when it isn’t crashing, the only thing is that it’s buggy, like really buggy.

Developer Response
We have discovered a memory leak that may have contributed to the crashes. Please check out the current version!
Great, but buggy
04/17/2024

OH ELM

This app is super amazing for what it’s worth and works well when it isn’t crashing, the only thing is that it’s buggy, like really buggy.
Developer Response May 25
We have discovered a memory leak that may have contributed to the crashes. Please check out the current version!
Amazing but have some requests
Apr 19

Troop gamez
This game is amazing I absolutely love it! I’ve played this a lot and love this game so much. However, I do have some requests. Could you maybe add more fitness presets? And maybe add a way for more advanced learning? I don’t want all evolution to be such a really simple process, however, I do want the option to be able to make evolution faster/ better. And maybe add more criteria. Just a suggestion of course. Maybe you could add a whole new type of fitness. Like how you have “water” and “land speed”, maybe you could add “intelligence” or “problem solving”, like have it learn tasks. This is all of course suggestions. Also, whenever I make my own creatures and then evolve it, I always lose my shape that I had. And I like how it changes, because, of course, it’s the evolution part, but I may want a preset option to choose to like keep the shape of the creature and just evolve like the movement. Thank you for listening and I hope u all have a great day ❤️

Developer Response
Thank you 🙏 for your thoughtful remarks and suggestions! We will consider adding "only brain" evolution as a new feature – meaning blocking crossover and disabling body mutations to preserve body shape. Note that you can already achieve this (and much more) by using the desktop app. The mobile app is intended to be a simplified interface for the full-featured simulator.
Amazing but have some requests
Apr 19

Troop gamez

This game is amazing I absolutely love it! I’ve played this a lot and love this game so much. However, I do have some requests. Could you maybe add more fitness presets? And maybe add a way for more advanced learning? I don’t want all evolution to be such a really simple process, however, I do want the option to be able to make evolution faster/ better. And maybe add more criteria. Just a suggestion of course. Maybe you could add a whole new type of fitness. Like how you have “water” and “land speed”, maybe you could add “intelligence” or “problem solving”, like have it learn tasks. This is all of course suggestions. Also, whenever I make my own creatures and then evolve it, I always lose my shape that I had. And I like how it changes, because, of course, it’s the evolution part, but I may want a preset option to choose to like keep the shape of the creature and just evolve like the movement. Thank you for listening and I hope u all have a great day ❤️
Developer Response May 25
Thank you 🙏 for your thoughtful remarks and suggestions! We will consider adding "only brain" evolution as a new feature – meaning blocking crossover and disabling body mutations to preserve body shape. Note that you can already achieve this (and much more) by using the desktop app. The mobile app is intended to be a simplified interface for the full-featured simulator.

Playground improvements: - simulate multiple creatures - delete and clone individual creatures - enable/disable energy consumption (creatures can die when they run out of energy; feed them to keep them alive) - enable/disable neural network window Evolution improvements: - option for only-brain mutations (to preserve body design in evolution) - separate water level setting for Evolution and Playground Other improvements: - more complete help messages everywhere - layout improvements, smaller buttons when run on iPad or MacOS