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SimEarth: The Living Planet is a simulation computer game designed by Will Wright and published in 1990 by Maxis, in which the player controls the development of an entire planet. Although the game was much admired when it was released, it was not a big seller compared to its hit predecessor SimCity. Versions were made for the Apple Macintosh, TurboGrafx 16 / TurboDuo, Commodore Amiga, IBM PC and the SNES (which was developed and published by FCI in 1992).
Overview
In SimEarth, the player can vary a planet's atmosphere, temperature, landmasses, etc, then place various forms of life on the planet and watch them evolve. Although as a software toy, the game does not have any required goals, the big (and difficult) challenge is to evolve sentient life and an advanced civilization. The development stages of the planet can be reverted and repeated, until the planet "dies" 10 billion years after its creation, the estimated time when the Sun will become a red giant and kill off much of the planet's life (In the SNES version, it is possible to continue playing beyond the death of the sun).
The game models the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock (who assisted with the design and wrote an introduction to the manual), and one of the options available to the player is the simplified "Daisyworld" model.
The player's control of the planet in the game is quite comprehensive; display panels allow the player to regulate everything from atmospheric gases, with percentages to three decimal places, to the rate of continental drift, to the rate of reproduction and mutation of lifeforms. In addition, the player is given options to place equipments or items that interfere with the planet's development, such as Oxygen Generators, which increase the composition of oxygen in the atmosphere, and the Monolith, a take on the one found in A Space Odyssey (film), which aids in increasing intelligence of a lifeform through extraterrestrial contact.
The list of disasters ranges from natural occurrences, such as hurricanes and wild fires, to population-dependent disasters, such as plagues and pollution. Effects on the planet may be minor or major. Increased volcanic eruptions, for example, increase the amount of dust in the atmosphere, lowering global temperature; earthquakes in a body of water may produce tsunamis; and the shortage of nuclear fuel for a nuclear power-dependent civilization may potentially trigger nuclear war.
All player-triggered actions have a cost specified in "energy units" or "omega (Ω) units"; for example, 50 energy units are required to lay down a single terrain square, while 500 units are required to lay down a terraforming device. The energy budget is determined by the level of development of the planet, and the chosen difficulty level; on the lowest difficulty level, the energy budget is unlimited.
Despite the humor, both in game and manual, game play itself can be somewhat mystifying; species may thrive or die out for no apparent reason. Mass extinctions, however, are often followed by periods of renewed evolutionary diversification, allowing the player to experiment with new sets of species and ecosystems. The open-ended nature of the game and the lack of a clear end-point may help explain its lack of popularity.
Phyla
An interesting feature of the game is that all phyla of multicellular organisms are on an equal footing, and thus it is possible to evolve intelligent molluscs and the like. The two single-celled lifeform 'phyla', Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes (or Bacteria and Amoebas) are treated specially. Some examples of animal phyla include Radiates and Cetaceans as well as more well known phyla such as fish and birds. There is also machine life, which can appear if a city of the highest technology level (nanotechnology) is destroyed by a nuclear explosion.
Play options
- Scenario: Allows play in one of the game's scenarios, described below.
- Random Planet: A world will be generated at random; the player may then choose to start in the Geologic, Evolutionary, Civilization, or Technological time scales; there is no fixed goal, but one common goal is to develop a planet to Exodus, in which the resident civilization leaves the planet in a series of spaceships, causing it to revert to evolutionary development.
- Daisyworld: A world in which the only form of biome are daisies. The sun steadily increases the amount of heat delivered to the planet, and the daisies are tasked to regulate the temperature of the planet through a period of time. The types of daisies changes and regulate with respect to the temperature: White-to-grey daisies grow in areas with high temperatures, and grey-to-black daisies grow at lower temperatures (In the SNES version, white-to-yellow daisies grow under higher temperatures, orange-to-red daisies under lower temperatures). Daisyworld is a test of James Lovelock's theory of how plants regulate themselves and their environment.
Scenarios
A scenario is bolded if it appears only in the IBM PC version, while a scenario is italicized if it appears only in the SNES version:
- Aquarium: The player is tasked to develop sentient life in an ocean planet by creating landmass from which an advanced phylum may discover fire and create a civilization. The scenario also serves as a tutorial to create land. Aquarium is also the SNES version's first scenario.
- Cambrian Earth: Earth of 550 million years ago; the actual motions of the continents are preprogrammed up to 200 million years in the future (100 million years in the SNES version). The goal is to develop sentient life.
- Modern-day Earth: Earth of 1990, plagued with problems of war, pollution, and disease. The goal is to develop technology to the nanotech age and trigger exodus.
- Mars: The player has 200 years to terraform and colonize Mars, by sustaining a biomass of 25000 units and a civilized population of 1000 units.
- Stag Nation: A sentient mammal civilization is confined in an island too small to advance technology. Players are tasked to increase the civilization's population beyond the island and advance to the next level of civilization. An alternate choice is to wipe out the present civilization and allow another evolved phylum to establish a civilization.
- Venus: The player has 500 years to terraform and colonize Venus. All terraforming scenarios have the same requirements to qualify as terraformed and colonized.
- Dune: A desert planet; the player has 500 years to terraform and colonize the planet. The only lifeforms are Reptiles (one of the few phyla that can survive in a desert terrain), which are both abundant and civilized.
- Ice Planet: A planet so far from the sun it is covered with snow and ice. It must be terraformed in 500 years.
- Earth 2XXX: Robots have taken over the Earth. The player starts in the year 2225 and must find a way to destroy the robots and redevelop the planet. There is no time limit.
External links
- SimEarth wiki guide at StrategyWiki (previously hosted by Wikibooks)
1990 computer and video games | Amiga games | DOS games | Mac OS games | Maxis Sim games | God games | Sega CD games | Super NES games | Windows games
"SimEarth"