2009 has been dubbed the international Darwin-year. Charles Darwin was born exactly 200 years ago, and 150 years ago the book was published that would revolutionize the way we look at and think about life. And since this little space is so generously given to me to talk about games, I want to talk about a game that shows evolution really does work.
“Oh, he’s going to talk about Spore, that new evolution-sim by that guy who did the Sims” you probably think. But no. I want to tell you about Spore’s primitive ancestor, back in the analogue age, when it was still a humble board game called “Ursuppe” or “Primordial Soup”.
“Primordial Soup” (1997) is a hard to come by boardgame by German game designers Frank and Doris. In it, up to 6 players grab strains of amoebes by their DNA and force them up the ladder of life.
The soup is divided in a grid, and each sector contains little wooden cubes, representing foodstuff. Each turn an amoebe is in a sector, it has to eat a certain amount of cubes, and excrete waste. Hopefully the overall current of the soup will take your amoebes out of it’s sector before it runs out of food and is just swimming in… well… you know, its own poop.
Because the distribtion of foodstuff is always changing, and there is never enough to go around, there is a real struggle for survival. Now, just like in real life, there are two ways to take on that struggle: multiply or specialize. Each turn, the player is given a certain amount of points which they can spend on either cell division or buying new genes. Having many primitive amoebes makes it unlikely that they’ll all be wiped out, but they won’t be very flexible. Having a few specialized amoebes makes them potentially very succesful, but low numbers make them more likely to go extinct if they run into some bad luck.
The key is balance. Just dividing and dividing and letting your amoebes float powerlessly through the soup won’t win you the game in the end. Neither will overloading on powerful genes, since the thickness of the ozone layer will vary throughout the game and the UV will burn away excess DNA. The trick is to select the right genes at the right time. Being able to at least excert some influence in the direction your amoebes are going is a very powerful gene: at least you have a chance to swim towards the rich feeding grounds and away from the latrine. Or you can select the frugality-gene, so your amoebes can do with less food per turn. Or evolve a tentacle so you can steal foodcubes from adjacent squares. Hell, you can even give you amoebes a Ph.D. It’s completely useless, but your amoebes will be the brainiest thing around for at least 2 billion years.
Somewhere halfway through, the game really comes into its element. There’ll always be a player who decides it’s time to step it up a notch: fed up with simple wooden foodcubes, she’ll equip her amoebes with specialized genes and intelligently design the world’s first predators. Her prey: the other amoebes! And here is where you’ll see evolution really works. In just a few turns, all the other players will have evolved some sort of defense, wether it is armour, spikes, or just the gene that allows an amoebe to swim away when attacked. A amoebe that can’t defend itself will be eaten into extinction. The game will be a real weapons’ race for a few turns; the carnivore evolving new abilities and the prey developing new ways to stay safe. If the threat is removed, because intense UV-light destroyed the hunter’s gene pool, all the defensive genes are shed too in favour of others since they no longer serve a purpose. Until the threat arises anew.
In the end, the size of your gene pool combined with the amount of surviving amoebes is calculated into the end-score. I most admit I can’t recall any spectacular end games. The game peaks at the moments the evolutionairy arms race is on and peeters out towards the end. Still, it is a vey fun game to play – even if only for the sheer amount of poop-related jokes you’re allowed to make – and it even teaches us an important lesson, namely: Grow big, sharp teeth, and grow them quickly!
Next week a double bill: Kremlin and RoboRally.
wow nice game combining genetics and one of the simplest living animals, the amoeba. I guess this will teach us all how to achieve balance in nature so that all living beings survive. I am told in the next 20 years half the species on earth will go extinct.
ReplyDelete