ANLIFE: Motion-Learning Life Evolution
Unlike conventional games, this is a simulator that has no set gameplay or goals. You can enjoy the process of virtual organisms evolving through self-learning motion. In a world that incorporates mechanisms of evolution like genetics and natural selection, players act as the Creator, manipulating nature and assisting in the learning and evolution of the organisms.
What Players Can Do:
- Become the Creator of the World: Players can create their original planet and initiate a unique process of biological evolution within that planet.
- Become a God-like Entity: You can adjust the laws of physics and natural environments to guide the direction of evolutionary progress. For example, you can create an environment rich in resources to spur a Cambrian Explosion-like increase in species, or induce an ice age to increase selective pressures and favor stronger species.
- Experience Natural Selection Firsthand: Organisms that can find food will replicate and propagate their genes. Those that can’t will be eliminated. You can observe the real-time evolution of biological structures through the mechanisms of natural selection as described in Darwinian evolution. Players can also intervene in natural selection by favoring specific organisms.
- Alter Genetics: Induce mutations to explore the importance of genetic diversity. Maintain advantageous genes and enjoy the development of the evolutionary tree.
- Manipulate Physics: Incorporate unique elements into an organism’s genes (e.g., anti-gravity) to create creatures with fascinating movements.
- Virtual Artificial Life Zoo: Submit your biological experiments to the developers and participate in the planning of an artificial life zoo where distinctive organisms are showcased.
Recommended Play Style:
The game is best enjoyed while multitasking, such as while working, watching TV, or listening to podcasts.
Why We Created ANLIFE, from the Developers:
Life on Earth has progressed through the “mechanisms” of genetics and natural selection. Our challenge is to replicate this profound process in digital space and give birth to new forms of life.
ANLIFE was born through our research and development process.
Would you like to join us in exploring the unknown possibilities of life through playing ANLIFE? To do so, please send the results of your experiments to the virtual zoo for research participation.
Game Discussion
Steam User 132
So, this game has… an interesting origin story.
Remember that widely circulated clip from 2016 where Hayao Miyazaki allegedly called something “an insult to life itself”? In a certain corner of the internet, that line gets repeated as proof that he condemned AI as a whole. What he was actually reacting to was early motion-learning tech—the same conceptual roots that eventually led to experiments like this. No, he wasn’t issuing a blanket statement about artificial intelligence, despite how the narrative sometimes gets simplified.
And no, you won’t be staring at grotesque zombie creatures flopping around the screen here.
Instead, you get stylized little lifeforms wobbling their way through existence.
ANLIFE isn’t really a “game” in the traditional sense. It’s closer to a simulator—think Spore, but with less “galactic domination” and more “quietly observing your digital terrarium.” Creatures evolve. Or they don’t. Or they politely go extinct without so much as a dramatic meteor strike. (There is an unlockable meteor, if you’re feeling Old Testament.)
Life emerges. Life disappears. No cutscenes. No violins. Just algorithms doing their thing. Because, well… life finds a way.
If you’re looking for deep, progression-heavy gameplay, this probably isn’t it. You can unlock everything in under two hours. But that’s kind of beside the point. This is evolution as a sandbox experiment—watching machine-simulated critters figure out how to exist through trial, error, and a lot of falling over.
I enjoyed it, even with its primitive “gameplay.” There’s something oddly charming about watching digital life stumble toward survival. If you have an inner scientist who enjoys evolutionary algorithms and emergent behavior, this will probably amuse you.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go check on my tiny, slightly incompetent ecosystem.
Steam User 18
TL;DR: Pretty fun little evolution game, it's very simplistic right now but it has a lot of potential and there's actually quite a lot of possibilities (probably near infinite) for creature evolutions. In the time I've spent with it the bugs are minimal and performance has been fantastic, it seems pretty well optimized. The AI that learns movement is actually pretty good too and learns quickly. (For those worried, no this isn't your ChatGPT AI slop crap, it's likely the type of AI referred to as "Reinforcement Learning" that the developer has created, trained or configured for this game. You can look up tons of videos on YouTube of developers making "AI learns to walk/play X game" to get an idea) But most of all the game is pretty chill and relaxing and the solo developer is super nice and very responsive to bug fixing and suggestions!
You can either play it like a god where you force evolution paths yourself, culling random evolutions you don't like or giving help and doing some hand holding with ones you do like to force them to evolve into something better. Or you can completely play it as an idle game and just let natural selection take its course and see what the world creates for you. I had an aquatic creature that looked like if you put Squidward's head on a gun stock and it somehow became a strong evolution for about 10-12 generations before that branch of species finally lost out to another.
Now you might be wondering how the "natural selection" works? It's pretty simplistic at the moment. All creatures have HP which drains over time, or drops due to you using god powers/prey to kill them. They recover HP by eating food (bushes), so natural selection is simply "Which creature path/species can evolve to eat bushes faster than the others and thus starve the others out" There's a few ways to influence this through making things more difficult or more easy for the creatures: Using god powers to help things along, global sliders that increase or decrease various things like HP drain speed. Creatures also breed by eating special bushes, offspring retain some of the learned movement skills of their parents (unless the new body is significantly different than the previous). So some evolutions can be as small as a body part being rotated/angled 1 or 2 degrees in a direction, or as drastic as new body parts and complete reconfiguring of the entire body structure.
If you love evolution simulators I highly recommend it! The developer also seems to have a lot of ideas in mind for features to add and I'm interested to see where it goes!
Steam User 10
so i have 49 hours on this and thats over 4 days. i bought it expecting it to be a sort of "one afternoon" game, but i warn you, if you have the same breed of autism/adhd that i do it will consume you.
Steam User 11
It's cool
I wouldn't call it a an actual video game yet
it doesn't quite itch the desire of "when will someone make SPORE 2?" that we all still have from the original SPORE but it is able to quench it for about an hour
The fundamental idea of "watch your tiny creatures evolve into something cool and grand while they flail about" is still such an amazing idea that I bought this game as soon as I read its description
I'm recommending you buy this to support the dev so they can continue building this game into a grander vision (which I hope they are doing)
But right now it is more akin to a simple tech demo you'd see on SIGGRAPH or something
I wish there was more variety of food instead of just bushes, maybe trees, or rooted food the creatures have to pull on, or big trees with lots of branches the creatures have to climb etc...
Right now it's just way too simple and there's no "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around" potential like you have in games like WorldBox and stuff
Every day I will hope that someone makes a SPORE 2 with all the tech we have nowadays
Steam User 19
My Blood pressure has lowered is a great game for relaxing.
Think of it like from dust but with no goals to get, you just create your little flumps and watch.
Steam User 3
Amazing game I do wish Predators could reproduce though or you could evolve them but I'm absolutely addicted I have played this game for like 30 hours and 80 out of five stars I can't describe how good this game is I know it sounds like I'm glazing it but seriously play it. The only thing I would Add or change is to make it so predators can evolve or reproduce Oh and add more variations of plants And make it so the training feature Would include the map you're using I've had to edit it two times because I keep thinking of ideas but one more thing you can create your own creature and make more complex brains if possible similar brains to the sapling
Steam User 3
ANLIFE starts fairly slow; there's no way to automatically spawn food in the beginning, so you have to manually place it every so often to keep your creatures from dying out. At a certain point, though, you can unlock artifacts that generate food, which allowed me to leave the sim overnight. I left a bunch of floppy incompetent weirdos and came back to two populations of swift, capable critters separated by a river: one group that walked around on two li'l legs, and one group that moved like inchworms. This was delightful, and now that I'm deeper into the game, it's very fun to make changes to the world and watch the little guys respond. The developer's made a lot of great decisions that allow the evolution and movement to shine without making things too complex or overwhelming for the player. Some of the UI is a bit clunky or unintuitive, but that's a pretty minor concern and doesn't really impact my enjoyment of the game. Overall, extremely cool and very enjoyable!