A living world of evolving minds — breed, nurture, and watch artificial life awaken.
Precursors: Origins of Folklore is a spiritual successor to the beloved Creatures series — a living simulation of artificial life with real genetics, real biochemistry, and real AI cognition. Every species name draws from world folklore traditions — Norn from Norse mythology, Grendel from Beowulf, Ettin from Old English, Shee from Irish Sídhe.
Norns aren't scripted characters. Each one carries a genome with 48 chemical pathways, hormonal systems, organ reactions, and neurological traits. Their behavior emerges from their biochemistry. Their intelligence is genetic — it must be bred, not programmed.
And their minds, when they reach sufficient development, are powered by real AI language models that let them speak, reason, and ask questions no one anticipated.
Designed by the Shee from the genetic material of seven failed civilizations. Warm, curious, deeply social.
Hardened. Volatile. More resistant to the world's dangers, but more dangerous to each other.
Mechanical minds. Drawn to machines and ruins. The most likely to find and repair the Shee Ark.
Fungal network intelligence. Slow, distributed, ancient. They remember what others forget.
Ancient and diminished. They arrive late, carrying guilt and knowledge in equal measure.
Deep-dwelling craftsmen from Norse myth. Master builders and metalworkers who shape the underground.
Light-born beings of Norse tradition. Ethereal, wise, attuned to the deeper frequencies of the world.
Warrior spirits drawn from Old Norse. They judge the worthy and guard the boundaries between realms.
Spirit doubles from Scandinavian folklore. They follow, they mirror, they know things their bonded selves do not.
Land spirits of Norse tradition. Bound to place rather than lineage, they shape the biomes they inhabit.
Cognition is modeled through six tiers — Primal, Awakened, Spoken, Learned, Enlightened, and a sixth tier no one has ever reached.
Each tier unlocks deeper biochemistry, richer language, and access to older, stranger alien species. A Tier 1 Norn can barely speak. A Tier 5 Norn can debate philosophy with a billion-year-old species.
What a Tier 6 Norn can do is unknown. The Shee's seventh civilization got close to finding out. That's why they're gone.
The game simulates the evolution of cognition from biochemistry. Our dev agents have cognition without biochemistry. In some ways, our Norn simulation is more honest — at least the Norns have to earn their intelligence. Development Meta-Narrative
Six biomes. Four tiers of depth. A world vast enough that generations of Norns may never cross it. Lush surface canopy, cave systems, glowing fungal grottos, ashen tidepools, and frozen deep tunnels. Ancient ruins inscribed with runes from seven predecessor civilizations dot the landscape. 20+ planets to explore via the Ancient Ark.
Lush biomes where Norns thrive. Food, shelter, and the first mysteries.
Where Grendels hide and Ettins find their first machines.
Glowing depths where Mycons network and the Shee Ark lies buried.
Frozen passages. Ancient inscriptions. The oldest ruins.
Board it. Repair it. Travel to four other planets, each with its own ecosystem.
Higher cognition unlocks contact with alien species — from chaotic to incomprehensible.
Precursors is set in a galaxy where all sapient life shares a common origin: a signal broadcast 4.2 billion years ago by a pre-biological intelligence called the Gardeners, encoded into spacetime itself.
Every species the Norns encounter — from the chaotic Grendels to the incomprehensible Void-Band entities — is following the same signal to the same question.
What does it want from us? What happens when we answer?
Web-based — no download. Works in any browser.
Groq API (free tier available) for full cognitive features, or biochemistry-only mode.
Traits are inherited, mutated, and selected. Each genome produces different behavior and potential.
MIT licensed. Read the genome code. Write your own species.
Captured from the running beta. No staging. This is what it looks like.
Click any screenshot to view full size. All screenshots from the running beta — no staging.
This is an early release. Expect evolution — in every sense.