vga256 on Nostr: i grew up playing a lot of simcity, simfarm and simant. each of these games have ...

i grew up playing a lot of simcity, simfarm and simant. each of these games have varying degrees of outcome-driven gaminess to them. simcity is completely driven by player behaviour without goals. simfarm is more goal-oriented, and has definite goals with the economics of farming. simant splits the difference by offering two modes: experimental mode (purely creative) and full mode (destroy the other coloured colony and drive the human out of the house)

and then there were SimEarth and SimLife. i didn't own these as a kid, and came to them much later in life. i found the interfaces totally befuddling, and would usually quit after a frustrated half-hour of clicking around.

today I finally sat down with the tutorial mode in SimLife, and i finally "got it". i am absolutely blown away by the depth of simulation at both the genetic and ecological levels. like simcity, it is completely goal-free and encourages the player to just start flipping switches and seeing what happens.

*un*like simcity and the aforementioned maxis titles, SimLife lays everything bare for the player: you can control almost every aspect of the simulation by dragging a few sliders. want your llamas to become oceanic filter-feeding amphibians? starve them of grasses in a coastal area. want them to become carnivores? dump a bunch of rabbits on the same island and they'll eventually start eating em

there's something totally refreshing about a game that exposes the entire simulation to the player unapologetically. sure, we have modern equivalents to that like dwarf fortress and rimworld - but neither is particularly good at communicating the depth of simulation with a simple ui.

it's fairly obvious that this was probably the reason that the game was not a blockbuster seller, and has a totally scant wikipedia entry: it's easy to become overwhelmed by this kind of design. i find it absolutely charming for that reason, and hope i can make simulations just like this, for a dedicated crowd of people.

#retroGaming #dosgaming #macintosh #indiegames