Overview
Stepping into the ultimate role of a planetary god, players are given control over an entire world from the moment of its fiery creation. Your canvas is a barren rock, and your goal is to cultivate it into a thriving, living biosphere.
You control the atmosphere, temperature, continental drift, and evolutionary rates. By placing oceans, triggering volcanoes, and mutating DNA, you guide life from single-celled amoebas to complex dinosaurs and mammals. If you manage the delicate balance of the planet well enough, a sentient species will emerge, build a civilization, and eventually attempt a technological exodus to the stars before the sun expands and consumes the world.
Visual Archive
Behind The Scenes
The Gaia Hypothesis as a Game
Following the explosive success of SimCity, Will Wright wanted to build something infinitely larger. SimEarth was heavily inspired by James Lovelock's "Gaia hypothesis"—the idea that the Earth and its biological systems behave as a single, self-regulating entity. Lovelock himself even served as an advisor during the game's development.
A Toy, Not a Game
Like many early Maxis titles, SimEarth is technically a "software toy" rather than a traditional game. There is no strict win or lose state. You can try to recreate Earth's exact history, or you can mutate reptiles so heavily that sentient dinosaurs invent the wheel, industrialize, and build nuclear power plants.
- The simulation relies on incredibly complex background cellular automata, tracking global wind currents, ocean temperatures, and atmospheric composition in real-time.
- The game's 212-page manual is legendary, serving as a genuinely educational textbook on atmospheric science, geology, and evolutionary biology.