Creatures Internet Edition

• Platform:   Windows 95 / 98 / NT / 2000
• ELSPA Minimum Age: 3
• Media: Video Game

View the continually updated league tables to see whether Norns (Virtual creatures that grow, learn and behave just like real animals) originated in your Player world, top the Travellers League Tables by tracking them on the Docking Station Central website. Ultimately grasp the chance to participate in one of the largest Artificial Life experiments ever!

CIE presents the user with The Docking Station plus a number of exciting bonus features including the ominously named Brain VAT- which gives you free reign to devise a Super Norn by working on new brain structures. CIE also contains the Disease and Toxins chart and Chemical Analysis Screen enabling access to the Chemical Graph module and the Injection module allowing you to monitor the well being of the Norns and if necessary administer drugs to remedy any inbalance.

Creatures 3 is also included in the CIE package and allows you to care for Norns in very different environs where the Norns live on-board the Ark with a number of plants, animals and specialist machinery like the Genetic-splicing machine.

In the Docking station the action is centred on a small ship called the Capillata, a fully self-contained world where you can raise and train your Norns. Train Norns to speak with the help of a 'Holistic learning machine' and perform tricks. In Creatures 3 the users Norns are able to explore 5 very different environs each with its own ecology.

These environments include the safe and friendly Norn terrarium, the Jungle terrarium where the vicious Grendels live, the Ettin desert stockpiled with gadgets, the Aquatic terrarium with shoals of fish, sea birds and underground caves and the Bridge, which houses a variety of machinery and ship controls. This is also the opportunity to meet the brand new Magma Norn exclusive to CIE. A Norn with an improved immune system and an attitude to match! Too hot to handle, these Norns tend to get more angry than conventional Norns and will defend themselves if necessary. Magma Norn prefers the warmer climes of the desert as such Magmas prefer to lay their eggs in hot, dry areas - the Ettin desert is ideal.

Leave your warp portals open and welcome creatures from other worlds and say farewell to your Creatures as they leave to visit worlds further afield. Operate a quarantine system which ensures that any Norn received is healthy enough to enter your world by checking them out in the containment Chamber, effectively vetting what comes in.

CIE offers limitless hours of fun with unlimited gameplay: Choose to play linearly: breed your Creatures, look after them and train them to build and operate gadgets to gain access to other levels of the world until the game is completed. Conversely, visit the virtual world at whim and play with your Norns in an infinite virtual playground.

• PC & Video Games > Games > Strategy