Minimals: Evolution Simulator 2D

About

Minimals is a simulation sandbox game where you observe tiny organisms known as 'Minimals' as they grow. The primary purpose of Minimals is to showcase the process of evolution as well as related concepts such as natural selection, selective breeding, common descent and descent with modification.

The primary focus of the game in this version is to showcase evolution via natural selection. Natural selection is the process where organisms with favourable traits are more likely to reproduce. In doing so, they pass on these traits to the next generation. Over time this process allows organisms to adapt to their environment. This is because the frequency of genes for favourable traits increases in the population.

Members of a species are not all alike, partly because of differences in heredity (genetics). This is true even with children of the same parents. Some of these differences might make one organism better at surviving and reproducing than others in a particular habitat. When this organism reproduces, its children get the genes, which gave it the advantage.

Minimals showcases this process on a more basic and small scale. The Minimals have only one goal in this situation, to eat food (the white squares) in order to maintain the required energy levels to survive. The traits that are used to showcase the natural selection process are Health, Energy, Energy Loss Rate, Speed, Speed Decay Rate and Immunity. Each of these traits have different values depending on the Minimal and once it reaches a certain Health and Energy level, it will asexually reproduce and create a child which its traits are passed down to. Each Minimal when born will have a small chance of having mutations that alter its stats from its parents allowing for variation to perpetuate throughout the whole simulation. The Minimals with the most favourable traits will survive longer and therefore reproduce and pass down their traits.