Bludgeonsoft has announced that their living world of pixels game, Vilmonic will launch on November 5, 2018.
Vilmonic at a quick glance looks like a cute life simulator sandbox. Don’t be fooled.
Players are tasked with protecting and breeding unique pixel-art lifeforms where the pixels and colors themselves have meaning. Each creature’s body is programmatically generated from its genes. In other words the genes determine the creatures shape, which in turn determine how many nutrients the creature needs and environment type.
The game is founded on the principles that artificial life and computational systems can actually be living systems. Vilmonic has created a living world of evolving life forms with emergent behavior. This emergent behavior comes from Braitenberg-style neural-net brains that evolve from a simple rule set.
Through the use of observation and experimentation players will learn the hidden rules of the world and its biology. Players can sit back and let natural selection run its course. Or players can start manipulating the environment or artificial selection and breeding to drive evolution. For example a player can spread toxic waste to increase reproductive mutation rates.
Vilmonic comes with a story and mysterious history that is waiting to be discovered in eons of buried trash and ancient technologies. Some of it is junk. Some of it has a purpose.
Players can craft new tools. They can also build buildings, roads, farms, dig rivers, and make islands. All of this helps create and personalize the world.
But be careful as you are not alone. There are others like you and they don’t care about you or your work. Players will need to watch out for the violent and selfish zombitons. They love to build their own cities so players will need to figure out to live with them or risk their wrath.
Vilmonic launches on Steam or Itch.io on November 5 for Windows, Mac, and Linux. The game is available as Early Access now for $9.99 USD.
Based out of Oakland, California, Bludgeonsoft is a single person studio founded by Mark Stramaglia. Founded in 2012. The company has several music titles such as BackToBasics, WMCP, and Abominaclavia and also has won honorable mention at International Festival of Electroacoustic Music in Bourges, France.
More information can be found on the Vilmonic site.
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