BioSim — Artificial Life and Ecosystem Simulator

About the Game

BioSim is a sandbox simulation of artificial life where agents move, feed, reproduce, and evolve in a dynamic environment. There is no fixed objective—the main purpose is to experiment and observe how populations of herbivores and carnivores interact, adapt, and compete for survival.

Features

• Adjustable food growth, birth-frequency, mutation and simulation-speed controls.
• Save and restore the simulation state on the current device.
• Toggle food and vision layers to inspect the ecosystem more clearly.
• When paused, select an agent to inspect a genetic scan drawn inside the simulation.
• Responsive interface: fits any screen or iframe.
• Agents are visually distinct by color (green = herbivore, red = carnivore, blue = hybrid).

Controls

• Restart: Resets the simulation.
• Pause/Resume: Freezes or continues the simulation.
• Select a paused agent: Tap an agent to open its genetic scan.
• Food View (🌱): Show or hide the food layer.
• Vision View (👁️): Show or hide agents’ vision cones.
• Save (💾): Stores the current ecosystem in this browser’s local device storage.
• Load (↺): Restores the ecosystem last saved on this device.
• Chart (📈): Shows or hides a compact history of agent populations and plant/carrion resources.
• Food growth: Higher values create food patches more often.
• Herb births / Carn births: Higher values shorten the recovery time between births for that diet group. They do not bypass the biological requirements below.
• Mutation: Higher values make each new generation more likely to vary, and make those changes larger.
• Speed: Changes the pace of the whole simulation from 0.25× to 4×; it does not change the rules.

Explore the simulation, adjust the parameters, and watch as virtual life unfolds in real time.

News & Release Notes

September 23, 2026 — Living ecosystem update

• New worlds now begin with a varied food landscape: dense fertile clusters, lighter areas, and empty zones.
• Herbivores and hybrids leave orange carrion patches when they die. Carnivores gain extra energy from carrion and can use it to reproduce; hybrids can scavenge it on some feeding attempts.
• Agents have gentle wheel inertia and wandering noise to reduce fixed spinning and perfectly repeated circles.
• Added a 1–10 mutation control, clearer food/birth controls, and a 0.25×–4× simulation-speed control.
• Save and Load preserve a local ecosystem in the browser. The optional chart follows five minutes of real time, independently of simulation speed.

How the ecosystem works

Each new world starts with several randomly placed food clusters. More clusters slowly regrow over time. Green agents are herbivores, red agents are carnivores, and blue agents have an intermediate diet; the visible counter is their combined total.

When a herbivore or hybrid dies, it leaves an orange carrion patch. Carnivores can always consume it; hybrids scavenge it with a 50% chance on each feeding attempt, while herbivores cannot use it.

An agent can reproduce asexually only after reaching adulthood, building enough health, completing its recovery period, and standing on a resource cell that is at least 45% full. Herbivores and hybrids use plant food; carnivores use carrion. A birth consumes some of the parent’s energy and that local resource. Higher birth sliders make recovery quicker, but cannot make an underfed or juvenile agent reproduce.

Mutation affects offspring only. Low settings preserve inherited behaviour more closely; high settings explore more varied traits and neural connections, which can help or harm a lineage.

Compare food supply and population changes

For a simple experiment, keep Births, Mutation and Speed unchanged, restart, and compare Food growth values across several runs. BioSim is an artificial life model with randomized outcomes, not a predictor of real animal populations.

Follow the food supply experiment to record your observations.