Evolution - Learning Creatures 4+

This is a simulator about natural selection where these little stick-creatures try to evolve and do different tasks by changing how their muscles move, but not their body shape. It’s cool how you can build your own creatures. TO THE DEVELOPER: I know how many people want the creatures’ bodies to evolve, which would be neat, but it would be hard to do. But, I do have an idea for a big update: to add to running, jumping, obstacle jump, and climbing, you should add Swimming. Here’s how it would work: The task is to swim the furthest, like running. There would be a surface where water physics aren’t a thing, and then maybe 25 meters deep would be the ground, because that would be weird not to have a ground. Whatever part of a creature is submerged, it has hydrodynamics applied to it. (Like aerodynamics.) Hope you add this feature and please respond with you thoughts.

For a basic look at how evolutionary algorithms work, this is a fun start. I did however quickly bump up against some limitations which I think could make it better.
- Muscles should have maximum and minimum stretch. I tried to make a creature with bones only connected by muscles (no joints) and found that the muscles could stretch to absurd lengths. So much so that they would extend way beyond the edge of the screen
- There should be a zoom out/zoom in feature so you can see your entire creature if it extends beyond the edges of your device
- It would be interesting to allow exact attachment locations on a bone rather than just the middle
- Multiple muscles between bones would also make it more interesting
- For experimenting with boneless creatures, it would be cool to have direct muscle to node connections rather than restricting them to bone connections
- And finally, for longer simulations (10 seconds or more) the creatures often get trapped in a steady state where nothing happens. There should be some sort of progress detector to look for stationary states and force the creature to do something different.
For what it is, it’s fun and easy, but it was so successful that it quickly had me wishing it could do more complex things.

I haven’t seen any other game like this! It’s so cool to give your creature muscles and skeleton, then watch it learn to use its body with the A.I. based on each trial. The 2D platform works as a challenge and as an advantage to use your creativity! I made this weird bipedal thing with a spring appendage that sprints using somersaults. It balls up it’s front leg and twerks it’s hoof for balance.

The only thing I’d fix is to give the muscles a limit to how far they can stretch. Because there is one pretty easy hack that seems to defy physics. Otherwise it’s a pretty solid platform.