Where Beasts Were Born

is an experimental Action-RPG in which the creatures you fight against evolve and learn from previous rounds.

On your search for magical powers, you make your way through underground caves and tunnels, only to discover that they are filled with creatures of all sorts. These creatures want to protect their habitat from intruders and you need to fight to get past them. But there is a twist - due to the magical forces amongst which they live, the creatures mutate and evolve.

How it works:

Each round, the game collects statistics about the creature's performance and (using a genetic algorithm) lets the best creatures breed the next generation for the next round. In this way, creatures adapt to your playstyle and become better and smarter. Prepare to die - many, many times.

The backbone of the game is a creature generator which generates creatures from DNA strings. By mixing, interpolating and mutating these strings, we can create creatures that mix, interpolate and mutate - and simulate evolution.

Development

Where Beasts Were Born is under active development by a (currently) very small team. We're excited to share the experience with you and happy to discuss features, ideas and take your feedback under consideration.

Possible future features include:

Creature breeding
Creature sharing
Mutliplayer (Coop)
Build your own target function
Biomes

Come follow the development on Discord, Twitter or Youtube (Links in side bar) or support the project on Patreon!

Interpolation

The creature generator can create smoothly varying creature meshes, as shown here:

These interpolations are not part of the final game, but show off how smoothly varying the genetic information also smoothly varies the creature's appearance.

Family trees

The generator can also be used to mix creature DNAs. In the following images, the two larger creatures to the left are the parents. By mixing their DNA and creating creatures from the result, we can create children that inherit properties from their parents. This is the core mechanic behind Where Beasts Were Born, because - when we choose which creatures get to breed and reproduce - we can automatically create new, interesting variations of creatures that are fun to play against, creatures that look neat... or creatures that will totally destroy you.