A free AI creature game
The Bibites is a free simulation video game wherein you can spawn and evolve little critters. Developed by Léo “The Bibites” Caussan, this 2D pixelated indie game is a biologically-inspired “realistic” artificial life simulator that features real-time genetical and behavioral evolution.
Similar to games like Spore and slither.io, The Bibites displays a top-down view of your spawning area—allowing you to freely zoom in and out and pan across the field as you watch over the growing creatures. They’re not too detailed and you can’t customize their appearance but this game easily simulates their lifespan and behaviors.
Highly customizable simulator
The whole concept of The Bibites is to simulate little 8-bit creatures called “bibites” and evolve them using different methods. However, unlike most games, there’s no actual end goal here or victory condition. It’s simply a simulator that lets you play around. You can set your preferred parameters on the main menu and simply let them be as time passes in-game.
You can also directly involve yourself and drag them around to feed on plants and whatnot, kill them, or make them lay eggs. The game offers a dynamic environmental simulation that supports boundless evolution and open-endedness so you can keep experimenting to your heart’s content. The main menu alone features three major configurations: Simulation, Energy Balance, and Genes. You can tweak the settings here using the sliders.
However, the main issue here is that it has no tutorial and doesn’t explain what the mechanics and controls are. There are helpful tooltips on each slider—and even redirects you to the official wiki page for more details—but players who aren’t familiar with AI systems and neural networks won’t easily understand and will have to grope their way through. It also doesn’t help that there’s no audio at all.
A compact creature sim
All in all, The Bibites is an interesting pixelated life simulator game as it offers configurations that let you specifically set parameters to influence your bibites’ behaviors. However, the lack of a tutorial doesn’t really endear it to everyone and you will have to consult the official website a bit if you want to go more in-depth with your experiments.
