Now, where were we?
Oh, yeah, right...
I opened up a new world, and like so many others, I was greeted by the familiar sight of Albia, just as it was back then.
So many humans found their love for Creatures right here, in this tiny little nursery with its cozy machinery and endless opportunities. Now, it's my turn to give it a try and see what my first experience with Creatures in its purest, most classic form is like...
With just a few clicks in the Hatchery, my first egg was placed in the nursery. Can't go wrong with this bold red color and bright yellow streaks, right? Sure enough, my first Norn emerged after a quick few seconds in the incubator: a sweet little Horse Norn I decided to name Darla.
Do note that I am, historically, pretty bad with names. With no autonamer at my disposal, you're probably going to find my Norns' names increasingly odd as time goes on...
Darla's first decision was to wander off to the right of the screen to play with a spinning top, which I proceeded to use to lure her back to the elevator so that I could bring her up to the computer. Sure enough, the inability to carry Norns already presents a challenge: here we have a Norn who doesn't understand any language, and I can't just pick her up and plop her down in places as I please, either!
I have a fairly solid suspicion that individually training well-behaved Norns will be particularly important. Since there's no easy way to grab them by the scruff and drag them out of dangerous situations, I need to be able to tell them to STOP or RUN and have them be obedient!
Once Darla had been successfully brought over to the computer, I realized that she would need a partner if the plan really was to create a population of Norns here. Of course, that's the plan of any solid Creatures play, isn't it?
Of course, as soon as he saw me hovering over him, scrambling wildly and trying to figure out how I could corral him back to the nursery... he made use of the teleporter next to the greenhouse, which conveniently brought him right back home, next to the computer. Phew...
It was at this point that, while I left the computer running to help catch Benny up with what Darla had already learned, I decided to play around a little with the kits at my disposal.
I'm sure that this would have been REALLY cool back in the day, but now, it's just kind of charming to think about a game launching a bunch of other programs just to do game things. That's a lot of moving parts, isn't it? Although the modern Creatures games have the convenience of everything either being in one place, or things being accessible as a part of the game's world, I kind of love using these kits. Each one even has a unique music or sound loop that plays while it's in focus, and I was quick to recognize the Owner's Kit's music as the music that plays when viewing the hatchery in C12DS.
The birth certificate is particularly cute, and I love that it indeed took notice of the date and time on my computer. (And yes, I am writing these posts a few days in advance, as that's the easiest way for me to keep myself on track and make sure things are ready in time - plus a little leeway if I happen to miss a day or two of writing posts during the CCSF!)
Meanwhile, as I was poking around with the Kits, I quickly discovered that Creatures 1 Norns seem like they're not quite as self-sustaining as the ones I'm used to! At least, not yet. They're still young, after all.
Both Darla and Benny were quickly becoming hungry and exhausted - as it turns out, they don't quite seek out a solution for their problems right away. Or maybe they don't know how? After placing food in front of them and trying to get them to "eat food", I realized pretty quickly that they probably don't quite understand either of those words. Turns out that, naturally, they don't just magically know what to call objects, and "eat" certainly wasn't part of the computer's curriculum!
After yelling "food" at them for a while and realizing I wasn't getting anywhere, I finally decided to do what any sensible person probably would have done in 1996 and read the manual. Turns out, yelling words at them helps them learn what to call whatever object they're looking at - and I'd taught them that I was food, rather than the carrots right in front of their noses. Oops.
I suppose my next task should probably be properly teaching them how to eat...
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