Why Do the Creatures Games Last?
I took some time to play some other video games this week, and I was sorely disappointed. Most games seem to get tossed on the proverbial shelf partway through, or get unceremoniously uninstalled upon completion. The only games I have consistently (or sometimes inconsistently) played for close to 20 years are the Creatures games. No surprise there! What makes them so intriguing, though? Why have I never tired of them for more than a few weeks? I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way about the games. What do you think? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!
Open-ended games without a set goal typically have the highest replayability factor. Each player can choose a unique playing style, which may or may not include specific goals. Yet it’s not actually an open world that gives Creatures its allure. New additions certainly keep it fresh and alive, yet there is something at the core. I have fond memories of the time I actually received the original Creatures game, which I’m sure plays a role! But I had similar reactions to games that never grabbed me, and have since faded away. Each title in the series has its strengths and weaknesses, which further makes the series more appealing.
To try to put my finger on it, I started up a world in Creatures 3. What makes this game so great? Creatures 3 and Docking Station are the ones that I enjoyed the least in terms of interactions with the Norns. Then I remembered the very first thing I always do with a new C3 world: Jump over to see what color rainbow sharklings I got! Ignoring the fact that CAOS commands can add more, I realized that this randomization was a very big part of my attachment. Aside from a small number of controllable factors, everything in Creatures is random. There is a new game experience each time a world loads, regardless of what happened last time. Two players can create identical worlds with identical starting Norns. And then after that first moment, everything becomes unique.
Then there is the underside of Creatures: All of the genetics and scientific components create limitless possibilities to learn. Yet there is one thing that many of us probably overlook most of the time: The backstory. Remember when you learned about how the Shee abandoned the Norns, and these eggs are the last of their kind? Maybe that’s not important to some players, but this is a major factor in the way I feel connected to my Creatures 1 Norns. In short, the beauty of the Creatures series is that there isn’t one thing that keeps me interested. It’s a huge ball of concepts that sticks with me, and I expect to still be playing decades from now!
I love creatures 1 the most because you have an “at home” feel
I agree! It does have a very warm and welcoming feeling to it. I’m also a huge fan of the music for Creatures 1. It’s made up of randomized sound files that are only around 10 seconds in length, but I prefer C1 music over what’s in C2 and C3/DS. It has that sort of cozy feel to it that you can’t help but enjoy!
I never thought about it, but randomness does help keep the games interesting. The randomness makes wolfling runs end up differently, even if it’s the same group of Norns in the same world. It also makes watching a population of Norns interesting. Even two 1st gens from the same genome can have different personalities, though C3/DS Norns aren’t always full of personality. When I play DS, I tend to get attached to populations and not individuals. Like I’ll notice this one population has some weird quirk I like and I’ll root for it/hope it does well in a wolfling run. It’s rare I actually get attached to a Norn, even in my pet worlds.
The community and the “underside” of the games are the main things that keep me playing though. I love seeing what other people are doing in their worlds and seeing if I can’t incorporate some of their ideas into my own game. Somewhat recently, I read your post on creating a backstory for a creatures world and decided to make a backstory for a random world. It snowballed into a fan-fic/world journal thing and it’s been really fun. Besides that, I love digging into how the game works. Trying to improve old genomes is always fun, and I’ve been slowly getting into Caos. Caos is like a puzzle I only have half the instructions for, with a reward of a functional agent once I do figure it out.
You hit on some great points! I agree with you about how C3/DS Norns aren’t too big on personalities, but I often feel a connection to a population vs. an individual. That’s awesome that you’ve worked on a backstory that’s turned into something much bigger! Creatures encompasses such a wide variety of topics, and it’s fun to imagine what happened in the past. Thanks for sharing! It’s wonderful to hear how the games mean so much in many different ways!
I like the games but I don’t know what to do with them. I know what you can do and how but I have no ideas…
Maybe I’d have something to do if the Warp came back.
It is a shame that the warp has been down for a long time. I’ve been in a similar situation at times: I know everything I can do, but I just don’t feel motivated to do anything. If it helps any, I’ve found that trying to learn something different can help! Picking up genetics, or even CAOS, can spark an interest you never knew you had!