Joe told me about this, and then I started seeing articles and adverts for it everywhere. It looks like fun, if you have a few hundred spare hours.

There’s a great article at SEED Magazine that discusses the development of the game, from the creator of The Sims, and goes into the compromises they had to make with the science in order to keep it entertaining. There seems to be plenty of scope for learning about evolution through this game, though the notion of “Intelligent Design (ahem..)” creeps in (possibly inadvertently) where they have sped things up to make them more entertaining and have created a creature editor (and Creator tools) so that players can build their own organisms.

Perhaps someone (not one of my ever-so-busy IB students) can post a review of the game in the comments.