A free 8-bit artificial intelligence simulator

The Bibites is a free simulation video game that lets you spawn and evolve little pixelated critters. Developed by Léo “The Bibites” Caussan, this 2D 8-bit indie game offers real-time genetical and behavioral evolution that you can tinker around using its “realistic” artificial life simulation system.

Just like the Spore franchise, The Bibites works as a “god game” wherein you have control over an AI-powered population that you can directly and indirectly influence. However, this game doesn’t allow you to customize your creatures’ appearances. You can only set up the rates at how much they spawn, their weights, their immunity, and more.

Customize to your heart’s content

In The Bibites, you are able to spawn the titular 8-bit creatures over a large area filled with edible plants. There’s not much else in this area—not many obstacles to deter your bibites from growing, laying eggs, and such—so the game focuses more on experimenting with their life cycles. This also means that there’s no end goal and you’re free to just mess around with the settings.

The main menu immediately displays three toggleable configurations for the spawning area you get: Simulation, Energy Balance, and Genes. You can tweak each setting here using the easy-to-use sliders and they come with helpful tooltips to explain their use, as well. However, the entire game doesn’t actually have a tutorial to guide you through its mechanics and controls. You’ll mainly be using your mouse to zoom around and pan the camera.

This game takes a bit of reading up to fully understand its nuances if you’re a player unfamiliar with AI systems and neural networks. Thankfully, the settings can redirect you to the official wiki page but there’s also something fun about just going in blind with your set parameters and seeing how your bibites fare. However, the game can get pretty boring at times due to the lack of background audio.

A somewhat advanced creature sim

Overall, The Bibites is an interesting pixelated life simulator game but it could still use some fixing. Its configurations are highly flexible and easy to use. Plus, you’re mostly encouraged to explore what the game has to offer. However, it lacks a tutorial to explain everything and music to keep you engaged so you will have to make do through other means if you’d like to play around with this simulator.