I always thought it was strange that I couldn’t get my creatures to eat carrots and potatoes. I knew that the items were classified as “root” so I opened up the genetics kit and found that all of my creatures lacked genes that encouraged them to eat other types of foods like leaves, seeds and roots. They only really knew to eat food and fruit and had a third, vague instinct to “eat” when they were hungry, which might explain why creatures were always putting things in their mouths. I also found that they lacked an instinct to drink water when thirst and instincts to push dispensers when hungry, so I added those to their genes as well and out came these guys.

I haven’t gotten any feedback from more experienced Creatures 2 players so I decided to give them another go myself and document my experience. Later, if I like this genome, I might expand on it or introduce more creatures with different sprites using this same genome. We’ll see. I’m not exactly a talented or experienced gengineer.

bandicam 2015-02-26 10-50-01-350 copyAnyway, first to join us is Isabelle. She learned all of her verbs very quickly and started to learn about things like food and toys very quickly.

She also kept trying to eat the doozers, but she didn’t have much luck. I eventually lured her to the lower level where the emotions and intensity computer was. I dropped some dispensers near her.

bandicam 2015-02-26 11-04-41-819 copyNext to join us is Katie. She is just as inquisitive as her clone Isabelle and set out to do many of the same things. Eat my hand, eat critters, etc. She didn’t take long to learn her verbs either and I hoped I’d get to introduce the ladies to each other soon.

As Katie stomped around the nursery, generally ignoring the computers, I checked on Isabelle, who complained that she was tired. I eventually used the doozers until I thought that the creatures had learned all the nouns that they could and then introduced our first boy.

bandicam 2015-02-26 11-28-16-292 copyThis is Ernest. He dashed past the computer, dispensers and the girls before getting stuck in the corner of the cave. Between the two girls, computers and the doozers, Ernest was starting to get the hang of language.

I could hardly get him to hold still, though and had a hard time answering his questions with the two slap and tickle happy girls around.

bandicam 2015-02-26 11-34-15-007 copyFinally, as if things weren’t complicated enough, I decided to introduce the last baby, Dodger. He actually stayed close to the computer and learned a handful of words.

With the computers looping automatically, the other norns constantly chatting and the doozers being pushed all the time, I wasn’t worried about his education. I added another dispenser and sat back and watched.

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bandicam 2015-02-18 13-00-07-562 copybandicam 2015-02-18 13-01-47-482 copyNot even 30 minutes old, Fiona passed away. The best guess I had about her death was that she had either become ill and I simply lacked the knowledge or experience to find out what she was ill with. Poor girl. I hoped that the same wouldn’t happen to the others.

Unfortunately, it happened to Gary as well! He was fine one moment then the Observation kit told me that he was starving. Just seconds later, all of his organs were starting to fail. I think I found part of the problem. I checked the science kit again and it showed that there were no bacteria attacking my creatures. How bizarre!

Finally, just to make sure it wasn’t the babies that I had created, I hatched some brand new Nova Subterra eggs, striaght from the download. In about 20 minutes, I would find out whether they were like this, too. I remembered that Jenny had a similar problem in the previous run and I was worried that I might have snagged some bad genetics when I tried to get a copy of the Nova genome.

Gary meanwhile was dying and I chose to let him pass away while he was unconscious. It seemed like I wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway. Unfortunately, this did mean that Liana and Pancho, my other two starting Novas would have to pass away soon, too.

Gary passed away and as he did, Liana collapsed to the floor. She didn’t even feel hungry and I never got a “starving” warning from the Observation Kit. Her line in the kit even said “Healthy”. Then the same happened to Pancho. It was all very distressing to watch. Once the four passed away, I had to keep an eye on the four brand new Nova Subterra babies. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone else having this issue with them, so I wasn’t sure what I’d find. Even Jenny, who was a new generation 1 Nova Subterra had this issue.

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bandicam 2015-02-18 12-20-19-528 copyBut this time, I came with Nova Subterra eggs. All of the creatures I’m about to introduce are based on the Nova Subterra genome, but with edited Appearance genes. Let’s meet them!

bandicam 2015-02-18 12-27-47-623 copyI chose from the 4 eggs I’d made available and the first norn to join us was this little one from the leftmost egg. This is Fiona and she looks to be a Spotted Norn.

By the time she was 11 minutes old, she had mastered her vocabulary and was starting to walk around rather than crawl. Once she was well taught, I grabbed the next egg in the row.

bandicam 2015-02-18 12-45-07-484 copyNext to join us was this little boy I’ve named Gary. While I was teaching him his basic words, Fiona fainted! I hadn’t a clue what could have caused this but I did use the Game State Controller to unlock all of the power ups when I created this world.

I injected her with Defibrilant, Metabolism Transplant and a ton of Prostaglandin and any other important healing chemicals I knew of. It was very scary but soon she was on her feet. The science kit was able to tell me that her organs were in rough shape and that her health was quickly declining. I didn’t know what I could have done wrong.

She fainted again and I watched her organs closely. The only thing not decaying quickly was her biological clock. Was there something wrong with the Nova Subterra genome that I didn’t know about?

To investigate this further, I hatched the remaining Nova Subterra eggs and decided to turn this nurture style world into a study.

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bandicam 2015-02-07 00-09-31-008 copyThe almost squeaky quality of their voices made it easy to tune the norns out, but I always kept an eye on the Observation Kit. It seemed like medical emergencies were rare, but to keep everyone safe, I made sure to make my rounds every once in a while.

I started to fall into a pretty hands-off style of play, like I use when I play Creatures 1 and Docking Station. It was actually kind of nice to just let the horde of norns do their own thing for a while. While they weren’t always happy, I was ok with that – real life is full of ups and downs so there was no reason it couldn’t be the same in this game. Besides, when I made my rounds, it was really just to ensure no one had fallen into an ocean.

The squeaking and drinking continued and I felt it was even safe enough for me to get up and clean my teeth. Given my strangely thorough cleaning regimen (due to lousy gums), this was quite a statement.

bandicam 2015-02-07 00-40-16-078 copyWhen I returned, Clarise was KO’d and there was nothing I could do since I lacked access to the Science Kit. All I could do was watch and wait.

I had mixed feelings about the state of her. Part of me was sad to watch and I felt helpless since I had no means to help. Some other part of me was planning on introducing Nova Subterra genes to the pool to prevent starvation related death like Clarice’s. When she eventually passed away, she was pregnant and took her final egg to her with Silicon Heaven.

Now, I was faced with a dillema. I had a lot of dumb creatures on my hands and I doubted I could get Nova Subterra genes to dominate the pool given Clarise’s success as a breeder. I quietly exported all of the creatures and decided to post them for download. Perhaps a smarter breed would be less frustrating for me.

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