Montreal, Canada’s Kutoka Interactive on Thursday announced that it’s shipping two new games to the North American Mac market: Creatures: Exodus and Creatures: Village. This is the first time that Kutoka, best known for its educational titles like the Mia series and Didi and Ditto, have shipped games, although these games help reinforce lessons in biology, genetics and more.
The Creatures series are artificial life games featuring “Norns.” They model real biological systems, complete with unique biochemistry, brains and “Digital DNA.” Each one is unique. Norns can be sent to school to learn how to communicate with you, and they need to be fed, taken care of and taught right from wrong. When they become adults Norns can breed, passing along their genetic material to a new generation.
Creatures: Exodus is an open-ended game set on a spaceship called the Ark. This marks the game’s debut on the Mac platform — it was previously available for Windows, and was developed by a game maker based in the UK called Gameware. Featuring six large environments, each area on the Ark has its own ecology, food chain and dangers, according to Kutoka — you can construct machines to help you protect and defend your Norns from other creatures that would do them harm, like Ettins and Grendels.
If that isn’t enough, another spaceship called Capillata features more environments, new devices to use and more. The “Docking Station” lets you interact online with other Creatures: Exodus players, allowing your Norns to interact with each other while you chat.
Creatures: Exodus is a hybrid CD-ROM that works on Windows and Mac, it costs US$19.99. Kutoka expects to begin shipping the title on October 1, 2005, and recommends it for players ages eight and up. System requirements include Mac OS X v10.2 or later and a G3/900MHz or faster or G4/700MHz or faster.
Creatures: Village
Kutoka will also be shipping Creatures: Village, a second Gameware-developed Creatures game in which you interact with and breed Norns. Creatures: Village features fifteen play areas with myriad activities to participate in, ranging from parachuting to flying in an airship to baking a cake and more. Like Creatures: Exodus, the game introduces principles of biology, genetics and ecosystems.
As with Creatures: Exodus, Creatures: Village ships on October 1, 2005 for $19.99, and comes in hybrid CD-ROM format. Creatures: Village is appropriate for kids five and up, according to Kutoka. System requirements include Mac OS X v10.2 or later and a G3/900MHz or faster or G4/700MHz or faster.
Kutoka’s Web site had not been updated as MacCentral posted this article.