Sharrukin's Palace

So, to recap: we’re playing through the Phil Eklund games Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna, with the intention to use the results to inspire the design of an alien world (and possibly a sentient species) for use in some SF writing.

So far, we’ve worked through roughly a billion years of the world’s history. The planet has a large moon, rather like ours. It also has extensive oceans. In fact, the planet has yet to develop active plate tectonics, so it’s in a “tropical waterworld” state, with lots of small islands – many of them volcanic – but no large continents.

I’m playing all four positions in the game. So far, three players have developed at least one micro-organism that’s alive and active in the planet’s oceans. Rather than use the lengthy scientific names for these organisms (derived from their primary metabolic pathways) we have shorthand names based on their places of origin:

• Player Yellow – “Space Bug,” originally developed in a substrate of organic-and-volatiles-rich dust, left over from the proto-planetary nebula. Also the “Gamma Bug,” a new organism that recently arose from radioactives-rich beach sands.
• Player Red – “Mars Bug,” originally developed in an outer planet’s cool oceans, and delivered to this planet aboard meteorites.
• Player Green – “Smoker Bug,” which originated in the “black smoker” vents in the depths of the global oceans.

Player Blue hasn’t developed an organism of his own yet, but through some careful investment and the deployment of viral parasites, he has managed to earn a stake in the Space Bug and will be helping Yellow to build that up.

One note about Player Red: his Mars Bug is particularly well-suited to generate lots of Catalysts, the currency of the game that can be used to purchase improvements. (In game terms, it has lots of red cubes, indicating a very active and productive metabolism.) On the other hand, no other player has any stake in the Mars Bug, which means Red is effectively limited to buying only one improvement per turn. Since random events tend to wear away at every organism’s status, this means Red may have a hard time actually putting that wealth of Catalysts to good use.

Okay, with that summary behind us, let’s move on.

Turn Six (1.0 – 1.2 billion years)

The event this turn is Supercontinent Ur, indicating another consolidation of what continental land-masses there are on the planet – there probably aren’t very many, since the Tropical Waterworld condition is still in effect. Ocean and Coastal landforms are active, and two new refugia are deployed. The Pumice Raft represents floating collections of porous volcanic stone, another place where cell structures might easily form. The UV Irradiated Ocean represents open water in which chemistry is being driven by high-energy sunlight. Earth is still in a Warming period.

Most players leave their existing investments in place, although Green places an investment in the Alkaline Seep refugium that appeared last turn. None of the autocatalytic rolls generate significant results.

During Darwin rolls, every organism generates at least one or two Catalysts. Red’s Mars Bug generates a pile of red disks, so many that Red maxes out on how many he can hold. He takes several yellow disks instead. The Gamma Bug suffers the loss of one cube for the lack of enough genetic code to prevent replication errors.

During purchases, Yellow’s Space Bug makes great progress. Since three players all have a stake in the organism, each of them can spend some of Yellow’s disks to improve it, and they do. At the end of the turn, the Space Bug is so advanced that it’s ready to make the jump to multicellular status. In the process, the Space Bug releases another oxygen spike that’s strong enough to wear away some of Mars Bug’s progress. Grumbling some more, Red spends disks to purchase Chloroplast Symbionts for the Mars Bug, giving it more ability to deal with oxygen in its environment.

Turn Seven (1.2 – 1.4 billion years)

The event is Huronian Snowball. With photosynthesis slowly filling the atmosphere with free oxygen, any methane and carbon dioxide is being drawn down, plunging the planet into a deep freeze. The oceans are freezing over, almost down to the equator. The Cosmic landform is active. The Continental landform would also be active, but the planet (still) has no continents. No new refugia turn up. A weak global oxygen spike occurs, but all existing organisms have enough protection to avoid taking harm. Earth is now (obviously) in a Cooling period.

Most players leave their investments in place. Blue takes another try at the parasitic gambit, this time attaching a Viroid parasite to the Gamma Bug and stealing one of its green cubes.

Autocatalytic rolls are mostly unproductive, but Blue gets a little luck and manages to finish organizing all the available manna at the Clay Mound refugium. He takes the opportunity to create a new organism, based on glycol nucleic acid or GNA. We’ll call this one the Mud Bug.

Darwin rolls are a mixed bag, although they produce plenty of Catalysts for everyone to spend. The Smoker Bug takes a lot of errors, losing all of its Mutations and even one of its basal cubes. Blue continues to have a run of bad luck with his parasites, as the Viroid loses its stolen green cube to a replication error.

Yellow begins purchases by spending a green disk and promoting the Space Bug to multicellular status, producing Flatworms. The new macro-organism is fairly robust, with two endosymbionts (including an algal symbiont that gives it some photosynthetic ability) and a functioning blood network driven by a primitive heart. The flatworms are at the bottom trophic level in the early marine ecology.

According to the rules, the appearance of the first multicellular organism means an “oxygen crisis” that brings the Archaean Era to a premature close. The last two event cards for that era are discarded, immediately sending this planet into its equivalent of the Proterozoic Era.

Notably, one of the events thus passed over was the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB), a late episode of frequent asteroid impacts on the inner planets. This would have been difficult for our organisms to survive, but would also have broken up the Tropical Waterworld condition.

Worldbuilding Notes: Astronomers are actually in debate over what caused the LHB, or even if the LHB really happened in the first place. It’s possible that the LHB is nothing more than an illusion, a statistical artifact created by the very small sample size of our Lunar rock collection. If the LHB did occur, the leading theory is that our solar system went through a period of orbital instability among the gas giant planets. This “unpacked” their orbits, badly disrupting the Kuiper Belt of leftover comets and planetesimals. Let’s run with this, and assume this alternate Earth’s solar system underwent no such event. Any gas giant planets are in closely packed orbits, probably in a 1:2:4 Laplace resonance, and the Kuiper Belt is very dense compared to Sol’s.

Yellow also spends a blue disk to purchase mRNA for the Gamma Bug, acquiring the “Red Queen” ability that might enable it to absorb its viroid parasite. Other players make small investments in their organisms. Blue is unable to purchase anything for the Mud Bug, having only one blue Catalyst disk and no blue cards currently available.

Turn Eight (1.4 – 1.6 billion years)

This turn’s event is the Cryogenian Snowball. Even more extreme weather conditions than last time – the dramatic draw-down of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is causing the oceans to freeze over. No landforms are active, and no new refugia appear. The deep freeze is causing enormous drought conditions on what few land-masses exist, but there are no terrestrial organisms yet to suffer harm from it. Another global oxygen spike occurs, this one stronger, enough to destroy Mutations carried by the Smoker Bug and the Mud Bug. The Viroid parasite attached to the Gamma Bug is also wiped out by the oxygen spike. Earth remains in a Cooling period.

Blue is the only player with a free investment to make. He tries one more time to attach his Viroid parasite to the Gamma Bug, stealing yet another green cube from it. Yellow is beginning to get annoyed – if he has to put up with parasites, it would be nice if they would last long enough to become symbionts and actually contribute something! Blue and Green each invest spare Catalysts in their existing organisms, placing them as antioxidants that might defend against any further oxygen spikes.

The autocatalytic rolls are uneventful. Darwin Rolls produce a few disks, and no errors that can’t be covered by anyone’s blue chromosomes. Nobody but Red has a lot of disks to spend, and of course Red has no symbiont partners to help his spend his disks, so the purchase phase is slow too. Yellow gives Blue a mild glare and activates his Gamma Bug’s Red Queen ability, stealing the green cube back.

Turn Nine (1.6 – 1.8 billion years)

The first event is Oceans Rust Out, which is an Aftershock event – the Tropical Waterworld condition is finally broken, and plate tectonics are under way again. The follow-up event is Medea’s Revenge. Lots of oddness taking place here. The increasing load of oxygen in the oceans has reached a tipping point, in which a great deal of dissolved iron precipitates out and forms banded iron deposits on the sea-bed. Meanwhile, the anaerobic ecology’s last hurrah belches lots of methane, carbon monoxide, and other nastiness into the atmosphere, possibly messing up those organisms that were just getting used to free oxygen in their environment.

Oceanic, Coastal, and Continental landforms are active, and the last Oceanic refugium comes into play (the Green Rust Fumarole). Yet another strong global oxygen spike takes place, damaging the Mud Bug and driving the Viroid parasite into extinction (again). The surge of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere damages all of the active refugia, although none of them are destroyed. The Flatworms are forced to make their first Cancer roll and come through with flying colors, generating several Catalysts for Yellow and taking no errors they can’t deflect with blue chromosomes.

Blue is still the only player with a free investment. He doesn’t like his chances in any of the existing refugia, so he tries the parasite gambit one more time. Deciding that pestering Yellow would be a good way to get hit over the head with the rule-book, he attaches the Viroid to Red’s Mars Bug instead, stealing a green cube.

Autocatalysis rolls are uneventful. Darwin rolls likewise, except that the Mars Bug takes an error that it can’t cover with blue cubes, and is forced to give up the Quorum Sensing mutation it purchased last turn.

This purchase phase is notable for the fact that Yellow’s Flatworms acquire the last of their organs, automatically promoting them to Earthworms. The first precocious animal life has crawled onto the land, strikingly early in the planet’s history. Notably, no other families of land animals will appear for over a billion years.

Worldbuilding Notes: Here we have a water world, just beginning to generate continental landforms for the first time. There’s nothing but simple plant life and the equivalent of earthworms to form a simple ecology on land . . . and that’s how the situation remains for whole geological eons. It’s as if the planet is stuck in evolutionary stasis for a very long time, all the further progress taking place underwater.

Otherwise, the players make routine progress on their existing organisms. Red activates the Mars Bug’s Red Queen ability to steal back the green cube from the Viroid. Red is really hoping that the Viroid will last long enough to be absorbed as an endosymbiont in the Mars Bug – he would like some help spending all those Catalysts he’s accumulated.

Turn Ten (1.8 – 2.0 billion years)

This turn’s event is the Nitrogen Famine. This is a major development, a hypothetical period in which most of Earth’s nitrogen budget is lost, becoming nearly-useless molecular nitrogen in the atmosphere. This leaves almost no nitrogen for organisms to use in their metabolic pathways, until life develops the ability to “fix” nitrogen on its own.

This card triggers a massive “Smite” event, destroying all of the existing refugia except for the Deep Hot Biosphere. Generally, after the Nitrogen Famine, Earth is a lot less likely to produce new micro-organisms. Fortunately, an associated extremophile event and oxygen spike are both too weak to harm any existing organisms. Oceanic and Coastal landforms are active, and Earth remains in a Warming period.

With no refugia to invest in (aside from the Deep Hot Biosphere, which is unattractive since Red has a dominant position there), the temptation to indulge in parasitism becomes irresistible. Green gets into the game by attaching his Cyanobacteria parasite to the Mars Bug, displacing the weak Viroid parasite there and stealing a blue cube. Blue responds by flipping to the Virus version of his parasite card, attaching it to Green’s Smoker Bug, and stealing a green cube.

The autocatalytic roll in the Deep Hot Biosphere makes incremental progress. Darwin Rolls produce plenty of disks for everyone but Yellow, who instead loses one Mutation from the Gamma Bug.

At this point, Yellow is actually starting to feel the converse problem of Red’s. He has plenty of symbiont partners to help him spend Catalysts, but the Gamma Bug just isn’t generating any income for lack of an active metabolism. Yellow has attempted to correct this, but the cost of dealing with Blue’s parasites has held the Gamma Bug back, and now his stock of disks is depleted. Unless Yellow finds a way out of this bind, his further progress is likely to be stalled.

Purchases are uneventful. Both Red and Green activate their organisms’ Red Queen genes to steal back cubes from the parasites. Blue and Green make progress advancing their micro-organisms.

Interim Comments

We seem to be moving into a period that’s sometimes called the “boring billion,” a time in Earth’s history where geology, climate, and ecology were all remarkably stable. With the Nitrogen Famine in the past, and almost no refugia available for investment, every player is in a position of just trying to stay ahead of chaos. Who else is going to be able to produce multi-cellular life, and follow those earthworms onto the land? And will anyone be able to get something out of the exercise of parasitism? Find out next time . . .

So, let’s begin. The exercise is to play through Phil Eklund’s games Bios: Genesis and Bios: Megafauna, and use the results to inspire the design of a solar system, world, flora and fauna, and possibly a sentient species, all for my Human Destiny setting.

We’ll begin with Bios: Genesis. Rather than use the solitaire version laid out in the rulebook, I’ll play a complete four-handed game, making decisions for each position in turn. As best I can, I’ll resist the temptation to manipulate random chance in any given direction – the point is to let the cards and dice fall as they may, and adjust to events as they occur.

At the beginning of the game, our alternate Earth has just condensed out of the proto-planetary nebula, orbiting a star that is likely still in the early T Tauri stage of development. Things have cooled off just enough for there to be a solid surface and the beginnings of liquid-water oceans. The atmosphere is probably composed mostly of methane, carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other simple volatiles. Complex chemistry is starting to take place on the planet’s surface.

The four positions are Red (representing amino-acid chemistry, and controlling metabolism), Yellow (lipid chemistry, giving rise to cell structures), Green (pigments, controlling energy generation and storage), and Blue (nucleic acids, controlling template replication). Bios: Genesis is a competitive game, but many of the moves are cooperative in nature, and indeed some moves that might appear competitive actually open the door to closer cooperation between players. A certain amount of cooperation is, in fact, essential – the game’s random events can be brutal in their hostility toward life, so players who spend all their time tearing one another down will almost certainly fail. In its essence, the game is a matter of acquiring shares in specific assets (types of self-replicating chemistry, later species of micro- or macro-organisms), then deciding how much to invest in those assets, how to maximize value, and when to abandon a bad position.

Turn One (0 – 200 million years)

Each turn in Bios: Genesis begins with a random event from the card deck. The (first) event this turn is Theia Big Whack. This is an “Aftershock” event, which requires us to draw the next event card in the deck and implement it as well in the same turn. The second event turns out to be Mars Paleo-Ocean.

This is an interesting combination. It implements the “giant impact” theory regarding the formation of the Moon: a Mars-sized proto-planet coming along and colliding with Earth in the first 100 million years or so of its existence. Consequences for any early life on Earth would have been dire: the entire crust of the planet would have been stripped off and hurled into space!

Meanwhile, the Mars Paleo-Ocean event activates two refugia, limited spaces which are unusually friendly to life, both of them off Earth entirely. Random selection produces the Interplanetary Dust refugium, and (appropriately) the Mars Paleo-Ocean refugium. These are two locations where life might get started, moving to Earth later aboard cometary bodies or meteorites. Worldbuilding Notes: This alternate Earth will have a Moon, and it will also have a smaller neighbor planet which had life-encouraging oceans very early in its history.

With two refugia in play, the four players decide where to make their first investments. Red and Blue choose to invest in the Martian seas, while Green and Yellow both invest in the Interplanetary Dust as a possible place to form life.

The next step in the turn is to perform autocatalysis, an essentially random dice-rolling process (although the players do have some ability to manipulate the outcome) in which the “manna” or pre-biotic chemistry can be organized into a self-replicating organism. Yellow gets an unusually productive roll, organizing all of the available manna in the Interplanetary Dust refugium. Yellow takes the opportunity to produce the first micro-organism in the game, proto-bacteria from space that drift down onto Earth as it cools off from the Big Whack. In the game, this organism has a long jaw-breaker of a name (Photocarboxylation) but I’m going to label it the Space Bug.

Since Green had invested in the Interplanetary Dust refugium as well, that investment carries over to the Space Bug: Green will have a stake in that organism’s success, and will be able to help Yellow to spend resources to improve and protect it.

The next step is to carry out Darwin rolls for each micro-organism, a test to see whether the organism can replicate itself without fatal errors while also developing beneficial mutations. The Space Bug struggles with this a little, losing some of its early genetic coding, but surviving the experience.

Finally, in each turn the players have the opportunity to “purchase” mutations for their micro-organisms, genetic quirks that code for useful bits of chemistry or structure. Only Yellow has anything to buy for, and he has none of the “catalyst” disks that serve as currency, so we skip this step.

This alternate Earth already has life, but it’s barely hanging on, and there’s a lot of hostile gigayears to get through.

Turn Two (200 – 400 million years)

The event this time is Bolide Water Delivery. Comets are dropping down from the system’s outer reaches, some of them hitting this alternate Earth and delivering lots of water and other volatiles. Worldbuilding Notes: This alternate Earth, like ours, will have extensive oceans.

The arrival of lots of comets causes two new Oceanic refugia to appear: the Clay Mound and the Hydrothermal Vent. The latter refugium is particularly attractive. It’s slow to develop, but it’s very stable, and immune to many of the events that might otherwise destroy refugia before they can come to flower. Red is stuck on Mars and can’t move its investment, but Blue and Green both invest in the Clay Mound, and Yellow uses a feature of its existing organism to invest in both of the new refugia.

Autocatalysis is not very productive, although several players get a disk each out of it. No new life forms appear. Yellow’s Space Bug gets a good Darwin roll, producing another disk.

Green and Yellow each have a stake in the Space Bug, so they cooperate to purchase new mutations for it: the organism acquires Mitochondria and Chemiosis Respiration.

Turn Three (400 – 600 million years)

The alternate Earth now moves out of the so-called Hadean period – the solar system is calming down into its more or less final configuration, and there’s no longer the same degree of threat from space as before. We’re now drawing cards from the events deck for the Archaean period instead. The event this turn is an interesting one: Tropical Waterworld. The idea here is that despite the presence of extensive oceans, the planet’s crust is too warm and soft to form tectonic plates. As a result, the formation of continental crust is going to be delayed, leaving the planet covered with a world-spanning ocean, broken up only by the occasional cluster of volcanic islands. This will last until something comes along to get plate tectonics started, if that ever happens.

One thing to be concerned about: with no plate tectonics, there isn’t any way for the planet to set up a robust carbon cycle. As a result, greenhouse gases will tend to build up in the atmosphere, and a runaway greenhouse leading to Venus-like conditions is somewhat more likely. We’ll have to watch for that. Meanwhile, the whole class of Continental refugia will stay locked up behind the Tropical Waterworld card for the foreseeable future.

Worldbuilding Notes: On our Earth, plate tectonics and the early proto-continents were in existence as far back as 3.5 billion years ago. If the Tropical Waterworld event stays in effect long enough, that may mean that this alternate Earth doesn’t get started with continent-building until later in its history. That would suggest smaller continents and more surface area covered by oceans. To be resolved later, once we see how long it takes for plate tectonics to get started (if it ever does).

As in the last turn, Red is still stuck on Mars, but the other players all invest in the Oceanic refugia that are available. The Oceanic refugia are not very productive, but Red gets a good roll for the Mars Paleo-Ocean. Although not all of the available manna have been organized, Red decides that standing fast is likely to mean that he loses ground on Mars. He therefore takes the opportunity to generate a second bacterium, which we (and, apparently, a lot of Bios: Genesis players) will call the “Mars Bug.” The Mars Bug hitches a ride to Earth aboard a series of meteorites, kicked out of the Martian seas by comet impact, and takes its place beside Yellow’s Space Bug.

Both organisms do okay with their Darwin Rolls, suffering no errors and generating a few catalyst disks for spending. Yellow’s one disk is used to promote the Chemiosmosis Respiration mutation to Hyphae – this signifies the invention of DNA, and gives the Space Bug some additional protection against replication errors. Red spends two disks to purchase Riboswitches.

Turn Four (600 – 800 million years)

The event this turn is Vaalbara Breakup. The event flavor text refers to the breakup of the first “supercontinent,” and with the world locked into a Tropical Waterworld state there probably aren’t any real continents in existence. Of course, looking up Vaalbara tells me that it wasn’t much of a “supercontinent” in the first place – the two cratons involved make up only very small portions of present-day Africa and Australia. So maybe there’s not much of an inconsistency here after all.

Two new refugia are activated. The Deep Hot Biosphere reflects the possibility that life could exist very deep in the Earth’s crust or even in the upper mantle, in tiny cracks and fault-lines in the hot rock. The Radioactive Beach refugium is more bizarre, a theoretical structure in which natural radioactives (notably uranium) are deposited on a coastline, forming a crude natural reactor and providing energy input for primitive life.

As far as natural hazards go, there’s an episode of UV irradiation, weak enough that the existing organisms have no trouble dealing with it. Earth is in a cooling period, and has been for the last few turns; if one more such turn happens, it may trigger the premature end of the game as the planet becomes permanently glaciated.

All four players mostly stick with their current choices of investment. Red places an investment in the unstable Radioactive Beach refugium, less in the hopes of a second organism, more in the hope of generating some catalysts for use elsewhere.

Blue is the first player to invest in a parasite, attaching a Virus to the Space Bug’s tableau and stealing some of the resources associated with its Mitochondria. In this game, parasitism can be a hostile move, seeking to hinder the victim organism from making progress. It can also be viewed as a bid for further investment, something like a hostile takeover of a corporation! The player who deploys a parasite may be hoping that his victim will use something called the Red Queen ability to first take back the stolen resources, and then take the parasite itself into its genetic makeup. This mimics the process in natural evolution in which a parasite sometimes becomes a symbiont, benefiting both parties. In game play, the process gives the parasite player a stake in the “victim” organism, permitting him to contribute to its success in exchange for a share of the rewards.

During the autocatalytic rolls, Green’s position in the Hydrothermal Vent is very productive, bringing all but one piece of the available Manna into organization. Rather than form life at this point, Green decides to stand pat and hope for that last item to fall into place. Rolls on the Clay Mound and the Radioactive Beach make no progress, but generate several disks for various players.

The Darwin Rolls are very mixed. Red’s Mars Bug does very well, generating a whole pile of Catalyst disks. In fact, from this point on, Red’s problem is never a lack of Catalysts to spend. Instead, Red is limited by the fact that it built the Mars Bug entirely on his own, with no other player holding a stake in the organism’s success. As a result, Red is only able to spend one disk per turn, barely enough to make progress against all the forces that tend to tear down an organism as the turns pass. There is a special ability that comes with some mutations – the “Fission” ability that indicates that an organism can reproduce very quickly, spending two disks per turn. Unfortunately, the Mars Bug never seems to get the opportunity to acquire Fission.

Meanwhile, the Space Bug has almost as bad a roll as the Mars Bug had good. Even with the extra fidelity that comes with its new DNA, it accumulates so many replication errors that it has to give up the Hyphae mutation and go back to an RNA-only scheme.

Fortunately for the Space Bug, it does have the Fission ability, associated with the Mitochondria it still retains. That mutation also gives it the Red Queen ability. The Space Bug therefore uses the Red Queen twice, recovering resources from the Virus parasite, and then absorbing the Virus directly into its genetic machinery. Which is what the Blue player had in mind all along, of course. In his turn, Blue then uses his new position to promote the Mitochondria, taking the Space Bug almost back to the level of progress it had before the Darwin Roll.

Red, meanwhile, promotes its own Riboswitches mutation, developing its own form of DNA.

Turn Five (800 million – 1.0 billion years)

Another event with a Cooling Period marker will threaten the end of the game, but the next event card is The Clathrate Gun. This event represents the release of deep methane clathrates in the sea bed, acidifying the oceans and pouring methane into the atmosphere. Since methane is a very effective greenhouse gas, this flips the Earth into a warming period, postponing the threat. Some of the existing refugia are damaged by the acid oceans, removing Manna entirely from play, but a new refugium (the Alkaline Seep) appears as well.

The players assign their spare investments around the board, all of them pursuing a mixed strategy that might generate more disks to spend. Some of the autocatalytic rolls are indifferent, but both Green and Yellow get very good results.

Green finishes organizing the last of the Manna at the Hydrothermal Vent, and produces an organism whose metabolic pathways rely on acetyl coenzyme A. Since this organism came from the Hydrothermal Vent, we’ll call it the Smoker Bug. Meanwhile, Yellow gets a surprisingly productive roll from the Radioactive Beach refugium, and decides to produce a second organism, which we’ll call the Gamma Bug.

Darwin Rolls are mixed, as expected. Red’s Mars Bug again generates a bunch of disks, more than Red can easily spend. The Smoker Bug suffers a few replication errors, but not enough to do mortal damage.

During the purchase phase, Red and Yellow get into a minor tit-for-tat conflict. Some mutations or promotions lead to “oxygen spikes,” cases in which the organism’s chemistry is actively polluting the environment for others. This often involves the release of oxygen into the environment – at this point, most of the organisms are still anaerobic and have a hard time dealing with the presence of free oxygen.

In this turn, Red purchases a tmRNA mutation, which causes a weak oxygen spike that Yellow’s Space Bug has no trouble with. However, Yellow purchases Bacteriorhodopsin for the Space Bug, which triggers a stronger oxygen spike that is too much for the Mars Bug to handle, leading to the immediate loss of the tmRNA. Red grumbles, and considers ways to avoid being out-polluted. Meanwhile, Green begins to buy new capabilities for the Smoker Bug.

Interim Comments

I am very impressed with the elegance of the design of Bios: Genesis. Players tend to joke that “you don’t need to be a molecular biologist to play this game, but it helps.” Some truth to that, but if you cut through the jargon and focus on the game’s mechanics, gameplay isn’t all that difficult and the thematic elements become transparent. The mechanics themselves do a superb job of simulating the processes of natural evolution: selection pressure from the environment, innovation, “arms races” between organisms, cooperation-competition cycles, it’s all here.

For the worldbuilder, then, this game can point toward useful research, provide inspiration for creativity, and still impose the constraint of plausibility on the results. More progress next time.