Creatures 3
Description official description
You're trying to successfully breed a population of Norns. Norns are creatures that were created a thousand years ago by an advanced race called the Shee. Norns live for around seven hours, and have their own bloodstream, brains, and even a genetic structure called Creatures Digital DNA.
With your help the Norns can thrive. You can protect them, teach them, breed them and even construct vast automated machines that help you in your quest.
Spellings
- Creatures 3: ΠΠΈΠ·Π½Ρ Π² ΠΊΠΎΡΠΌΠΎΡΠ΅ - Russian spelling - Russobit-M release
- Creatures 3: ΠΠΎΡΠ½Ρ Π² ΠΊΠΎΡΠΌΠΎΡΠ΅ - Russian spelling - SoftClub release
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Credits (Windows version)
35 People (33 developers, 2 thanks) · View all
Producer/Director | |
Additional Design | |
Lead Programming | |
Lead Agent Engineer | |
Lead Artist | |
Software Engineering and Development Tools | |
Neuroscience/Biological Components | |
Additional Engine Development | |
Agent Engineering | |
Additional Agent Engineering | |
Art Director | |
[ full credits ] |
Reviews
Critics
Average score: 71% (based on 14 ratings)
Players
Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 8 ratings with 1 reviews)
Easy for casual gamers to get into, but deep enough for a rocket scientist.
The Good
Creatures 3 takes place on a space station. It requires you to breed and take care of a variety of creatures called Norns (and eventually mischevious Ettins and fearsome Grendels). Taking care of them ranges from simple feeding and teaching to advanced medical care. The gameplay is very hard to describe, but once you try it, it's extremely fun.
Your Norns live in their own area of the space station. This is where they thrive. The area includes an egg machine, a teaching machine, trees that grow nuts and fruit, and a large variety of gadgets. It is a necessity in the beginning of the game to wire these various gadgets together to create a variety of machines to defend your home from the Grendels, who can kill your Norns. You may also have to set up other machines to keep out Ettins, who will often dismantle unprotected machines. The machine building system is very intuitive, and very enjoyable.
But the real meat of the game lies in caring for your Norns. There are many different species of Norns (and even more that can be downloaded from the Internet) who differ in their traits. These range from the strong Magma Norns to the bizarre Toxic Norns who actually benefit from illness and eat garbage. Young Norns must be taught how to speak. Although Norns only sound like they're speaking gibberish, you can read what they are saying due to speech bubbles that appear near them when they speak. Teaching can be done with either a teaching machine or by exposing the young ones to educated adult Norns. There is also a secret machine in many areas that can instantly inject every word in the game into your Norn. Once a Norn knows how to speak, you can communicate with it by typing in words and "saying" them when your cursor is near the Norn. You can also teach Ettins and Grendels how to speak, but why you would want to...I don't know.
When a Norn gets sick, you will need to take it to the medical bay and examine it. The medical bay can support a sick Norn until they are healthy, and will meanwhile show you a large amount of statistics that you may not understand. The medical bay is very powerful, and can inject fat, muscle, protein, and almost any sort of bodily neccessity into your Norn. This is basically the only window into how powerful the simulation truly is, but it is astonishing.
You can take a Norn by the hand and lead it to almost anywhere. Doing this can help you discover new enhancements that only Norns can activate, ranging from powering machines on the space station to giving you the ability to carry Norns rather than lead them. This is also the key to eventually taking care of the Ettins and Grendels. Once you have the power to lead Ettins and Grendels by the hand, you can use a crossbreeding machine to crossbreed them with your Norns. Doing this for enough generations can eventually lead to Norns with interesting traits, female Grendels, male Ettins, or many other combinations.
There is almost too much gameplay in Creatures 3 to describe. The sheer level of possibilities is astonishing.
The graphics are rendered in a cartoony, yet realistic, style. They look very sharp, and almost 3D. The sound is also very well done. That's all I can really say about that, because the gameplay is so...enormous.
The Bad
Medical care is often hard if you don't have a Ph.D. in nutrition. And once you have a lot of Norns running around, it can be hard to keep track of them. Yet the former remains the most prominent problem.
The Bottom Line
Creatures 3 is a game that probably only the developers know how deep it truly is. It's a joy to play, and you'll be astonished at what you see.
Windows · by Zack Green (1162) · 2004
Trivia
Multiplayer
Multiplayer was later added in the form of a free add-on.
Information also contributed by Mary Jane
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Related Sites +
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Creatures Wiki
Creatures encyclopedia maintained by community members. -
Creatures3.com website
A mirror of the official website -
Docking Station
Download the stand-alone multiplayer component for Creatures 3, free of charge. -
openc2e
openc2e is a free and open-source game engine designed to be compatible with the various engines used in the Creatures series of artificial life games. It supports games such as Creatures, Creatures 2, Creatures 3 and Docking Station, on many different platforms.
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by Dan Homerick.
Additional contributors: Zack Green, Sciere, Macs Black, dome_quest, Patrick Bregger, DemonikD, Malkin.
Game added April 30, 2000. Last modified February 13, 2024.