Creatures 2



The second game in the Creatures series, Creatures 2 took place in Albia centuries after most of the original Creatures world was destroyed by a massive volcanic eruption, caused by the Lone Shee's spaceship (the Capillata) taking off. Released in September 1998, it included a far larger world, more complex Norns and ecology, and introduced the Ettins, as well as the Genesplicer (which allowed the artificial combination of two Creatures into one).

This game is no longer available separately, but can be purchased as part of Creatures: The Albian Years. The background images for Creatures 2 are available at C2 Back. There are also a set of comic strips in the Creatures 2 style entitled River and Petal.

Read the Creatures 2 Credits.

Game Requirements
(800X600 resolution minimum) Creatures 2 will run on Windows 2000, Windows Millenium Edition and Windows XP, but not Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8. The GoG Albian Years version however is fully compatible. The user Deji has also found a fix to get the regular game to run on Windows Vista Windows 7 and the 32-bit version of Windows 8 (the 64-bit version doesn't support 16-bit colour). Please note that this fix may not work with all versions of Creatures 2.
 * thumb|300px|right|The Creatures 2 Introductory VideoWindows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT4.0 (SP3)
 * Pentium 166 or faster
 * 4 X CD ROM or faster
 * 16-Bit sound card
 * 2MB 16-Bit colour SVGA display adapter
 * 16 MB RAM (32MB recommended)
 * 300MB of free hard disk space

Official breeds

 * C1 Brown Mouse Norn
 * C1 White Haired Pixie Norn
 * C1 Horse Norn
 * C1 Santa Norn
 * C1 Purple Mountain Norn
 * C1 Forest Norn
 * C1 Ron Norn
 * Hebe Norn
 * Emerald Norn
 * Pixie Norn
 * Golden Desert Norn
 * Frog Norn
 * Bulbous Grendel
 * Worker Ettin

Interesting facts

 * In the initial Creatures 2 genomes, Norns have 771 genes, while Grendels have 547 genes and Ettins 597 genes
 * Nearly half of the genes in each creature control poses and appearance; the rest are concerned with biochemistry, organs and brain structures
 * The first creature in Creatures 2 was a Norn called Alice
 * A Macintosh port of Creatures 2 was begun by long time (Millennium/ Cyberlife) programmer and wise old sage Keith Hook. Keith took over the management of the Origin2 project and the port was passed to a contractor. Unfortunately this work was never finished and Mindscape lost interest in the project.

History of Creatures 2
Creatures 2 was widely anticipated. It is likely that around 450,000 copies of the original Creatures had been sold by the time the game was released, and a huge following had developed behind it.

Unfortunately, the Creatures 2 launch did not go as planned. The Early Adoption Program failed to deliver on its basic promise of being "early", and the game had several major flaws, the most notable of which was a deficient norn genome that lead to OHSS. Cyberlife was subsequently accused of gouging customers when they released a Life Kit with an improved genome (as well as other features) but neglected to release this as a patch to the original game until several weeks had passed.

In addition, documentation was considered scanty, especially by those who had owned Creatures - much appeared to have been reserved for the strategy guidebook, Creatures 2: Official Strategies & Secrets. This could be a result of tighter deadlines for the manual rather than than the book (considering Mindscape's requirements for translation, packaging and distribution) or publisher-related editing of the manual for simplicity. However, these reasons did not go down well with people who had just bought a $40 game only to find that the manual's instructions for getting norns to feed did not work reliably.

Overall, Creatures 2 was probably a commercial success (despite inadequate marketing, which affected subsequent games as well) - however, it could be seen as a strategic failure, as for many it compromised the trust between the community and Cyberlife. Much had been promised, and yet many users considered the only improvement over the original to be the graphics. Third-party developers were naturally less willing to work on a game that they did not really enjoy playing, and this probably affected the supply of COBs. Things improved after the development of the Canny Norns and Nova Subterra, but some people had lost interest by then, and it is impossible to say how many people would have become part of the community but never found out about the improved genomes and so grew prematurely tired of the game.

Related links

 * Creatures 2 category