would they develop language? would they reproduce? would they evolve as energy dependent systems? what would they even talk about?
so i decided to make myself a god, and built WERLD - an open-ended artificial life sim, where the agent's evolve their own neural architecture.
Werld drops 30 agents onto a graph with NEAT neural networks that evolve their own topology, 64 sensory channels, continuous motor effectors, and 29 heritable genome traits. communication bandwidth, memory decay, aggression vs cooperation — all evolvable. No hardcoded behaviours, no reward functions. - they could evolve in any direction.
Pure Python, stdlib only — brains evolve through survival and reproduction, not backprop. There's a Next.js dashboard ("Werld Observatory") that gives you a live-view: population dynamics, brain complexity, species trajectories, a narrative story generator, live world map.
thought this would be more fun as an open-source project!
can't wait to see where this could evolve - i'll be in the comments and on the repo.