Gondwana

When you launch Gondwana, something between a pixel toy and a simulation awaits you. Not a game in the classic sense, more an interactive attempt at what would happen if you swarmed out into a world that assembles itself. Here evolution steers, you do not shoot enemies. Here you wait.

Gondwana is an experimental 2D simulator that puts you in the role of an ecosystem creator. You can intervene in the evolution of species, watch how they learn, how they reproduce, how they threaten one another. The game takes place on a pixel map; the creators released it without much fanfare, without a significant budget, purely out of a scientist-player motivation. It is not a story. It is an experiment.

It is played slowly. You observe how the virtual beings behave, how they react to the environment you have given them. There is no panic, no urgency, no timers here. You wait, you learn to understand the logic of evolutionary processes, occasionally you intervene. The controls are simple — graphically it surprisingly does not show everything it could. Sometimes you think that clarity is lacking. Other times you feel that the simple interface protects the magic in the background.

From the perspective of nineties games it is a curiosity. Simulations appeared earlier too — Creatures, for example — but Gondwana feels like an heir from another branch of the evolutionary line. Colder, more scientific, without a story and without emotions other than those you summon yourself. It is not a game you play to be entertained. It is a game you launch in order to take a peek.

Gondwana is today a curiosity for those who want to see how far one could go with DOS hardware and without marketing. It is not fun in the classic sense, it is reading an endless book about how things evolve somewhere without you noticing. In the browser it plays surprisingly smoothly, the graphics keep working, the algorithm keeps turning. Maybe you will not open it a second time. But the first time it gives you an awful lot to ponder.