Conspiracy Entertainment announced the upcoming release of the 'artificial life' simulator, Creatures, based on the mega-hit PC franchise of the same name. Creatures puts you in a position to influence the growth of Creature culture, caring for hundreds of unique 'creatures' while you teach them about their world.

Creatures are taught, not programmed, a fact that Conspiracy figures to be very attractive to fans of Pokemon and Digimon. "Those consumers are prime for some fresh stimulation," says Executive Producer Dan Jevons. In fact, a recent piece in Official Playstation Magazine anticipated, "Does PS1 finally have its Pokemon?"

In Creatures, players are the caretaker, Scrubby, who can influence Creature behavior by way of praise and punishment, but not directly control the Creatures. The Creatures begin repeating behaviors for which they have been praised and avoiding behaviors for which they have been punished, in turn developing 'personality traits' which are passed on to offspring. The ultimate goal of the game is to populate three entire worlds with Creatures that you raised.

"There's so much depth because each Creature can potentially behave slightly different than all the others," adds Jevons, "an element that will fuel the 'collect and trade' feature of the game." Using the memory card, players can trade for Creatures that have personalities that they would like to see passed on to their own Creatures.

Conspiracy sees a Creatures fad in the future. "This franchise has been huge in the PC world for the past few years, prompting dozens of Creature based websites and chat rooms," says Marketing Director Vince Matthews, "so we are really excited to bring the game to the PS1 console." Conspiracy will also release Creatures for the Game Boy Advance late summer 2002.

Creatures was developed by Creature Labs, and will release May 14th, 2002