Creatures is a game in which the player can hatch and raise anthropomorphic creatures known as Norns.
Creatures is an
artificial life simulation where the user hatches small furry animals and teaches them how to behave, or leaves them to learn on their own. These "Norns" can talk, feed themselves, and protect themselves against vicious creatures called Grendels. It was the first popular application of
machine learning in an interactive simulation.
Neural networks are used by the creatures to learn what to do. The game is regarded as a breakthrough in artificial life research, which aims to model the behavior of creatures interacting with their environment. According to Millennium, every copy of
Creatures contains a unique starting set of eggs, whose genomes are not replicated on any other copy of the game. An expansion pack, called "Life Kit #1" was released for purchase later. ==Development==