Creatura

I'm not too familiar with idle simulator games like this, but I have to say, this is one I've gotten pretty invested in. While I'm not sure if this could necessarily be considered an 'edutainment game' or not, I can certainly imagine this being in a middle/high school computer room, with how it comfortably engages with making a game based on real world concepts in biology and scientific research. The gameplay loop is engaging, there's plenty of customization, and once you get the ability to safely edit genes as long as you know what you're doing, it's engaging enough to feel like you're actively participating in the vivarium's evolution despite it still being up to your passive decisions and the natural succession taking its course overtime. The Scenarios(sort of a story mode with preset missions and guidelines) are great and I like how you can store items you see in them for your own Freeplay vivariums or choose to keep playing after the objectives are done. Only major issue I had was that, in the current version as of writing, the mechanic of using raised ground to split the vivarium's water into multiple separate bodies of water is pretty glitchy for me. Primarily, the safe spot decorations lose the ability to house the species on either end, as no matter how many times you place them in an accessible spot to reset which one they hide in, they suddenly undetect it in a matter of seconds afterward, so each time I want to do that I find myself not being able to give any of the species of that vivarium safe spots. They also seem to be either phasing through the split or constantly slamming themselves into the wall, which I have to assume is just a bug in their pathfinding or something. But of course, that is subject to change. I also have a minor issue regarding the prices of most store items being too high for how low you can sell things for, but maybe I just haven't gotten to a point in the game where I can figure out a way to afford them. Thank you for making this game, I'm still playing as of writing and I'm really getting the hang of it. It's great! (Side note: I'm happy I finally found a video game that features sea slugs and sea snails so prominently, they aren't the kind of invertebrates— let alone marine ones— you typically find in games, even ones that have gastropods in them already.)