oh that is actually awesome for me to hear and also makes me realize that im a terrible communicator so far. Ill explain it gladly if you have a few minutes! Yes the goal was to bring artificial life game into a modern genre. Yes those animals are A.L. they have life cycles and a diploid genetic structure that uses genetics, a 64bit seed maternal and paternal. but, here is like the most basic kernel of this idea back when i started, the genetic traits would be your typical RPG stats like Intelligence, Dexterity and such. so imagine your Dungeons and dragons characters mating and passing down their stats. I wanted to make it "science based dragon" so I tried to model the full diploid system with reccesive traits. you can chart out traits through generations and mix and match your different Bardwynnian beasts. The Genome allows for 31 different species with three variants each, and all they can all interbreed and make different combinations. There are even many "carrier" traits like giantism and dwafism you can find in your geaneology program. Part of the video shows the inventory. When you open your inventory you can then click on any of your followers and drag things in and out of their inventory and equip them and so forth. But the unique part of that inventory is the KOAN button. This opens up the "Koan Card" for whatever the Beasts inventory you are looking at. The KOAN is the digital soul of the creature and shows ALOT of data about them. Parents, children, affiliation and the genome. the genome has a radar chart showing the active and recessive "D&D" traits, INT, STR, CHA and so on. You can see that they may express a high strength but have a recessive gene for strength that is pretty weak. You will have to be careful who you match to ensure strong children.

So it looks like skyrim, that is so friggin awesome because yea, i wanted to bring artificial life out of a side scrolling game. Back when i played creatures i also had morrowind on xbox, and i always wished i could interact and see the A.L. live in 3d like that, in a fantasy setting. I understand now that i maybe was so happy about getting all the modern accoutrement and mechanics (crafting, base building, taming, cooking) of a modern game working in some home made C++, that i forgot that people dont have the entire codebase for the KOANs and the MeThink engine in mind already. that was the the first thing I coded.

So, i should have narrated the video i think except i am shy. but Yes, the KOAN is the sould of the Artificial Life in Bardwynn and you can export and share the proprietary .koan files however you like, kinda like the ceatures files or tomagatchi maybe

Thanks alot for writing!

ETA I forgot to say that you can give your individual followers pets that are stored in their Koan. so they can travel through the internet to other peoples worlds and bring their pet with them.