BIRTHDAYS THE BEGINNING
The big fang theory
Whether you favour a beardy creator or the Big Bang, creation is a dense subject. So spare a thought for Yasuhiro Wada’s1 indie RTS: a terraforming treat where you evolve primitive organisms over eons until they turn into humans.
Needless to say, Birthdays The Beginning is a smidge more high-concept than Big Mutha Truckers. Good thing it’s got a ruddy good tutorial, where you learn to transform a cube into a landscape teeming with life, all courtesy of an avatar2 who looks like the offspring off Ant-Man and Viewtiful Joe.
Proceedings start on a teeny scale. First you create water with the Primordial Drop tool, then a few drips from the Broth Of Life birth your first organisms, like Phytoplankton, Elrathia, and other prehistoric sea algae I’m terrified to spell. From there it’s all about balancing the environment’s temperature – raising the height of land lowers the temperature, while creating more rivers increases it – to ensure your ecosystem grows.
By balancing varied topography, such as air temperature, moisture levels, and ocean depth, and all this nurturing spawns exciting, advanced life. Like dinosaurs. Collecting leathery lizards with a jab of the touchpad is super-addictive, and there’s a Pokémonesque obsession that develops as your inner Attenborough catalogues every new species.
It’s just a pity stumbling upon the right balance can be so frustrating. I spend 40 minutes trying to get my water temp to precisely 46° to create a swimming slug. Grrrgggh. Still, this is a seriously clever game… and hot damn, are those cartoon dinos adorable.
FOOTNOTES1 Wada-san created Harvest Moon, and is perhaps the only man to make virtual farmwork cool. 2 Pop into Macro Mode with w so your avatar can regain XP to do more terraforming.