Modulo Evolved
A scientific 3D evolution simulator and genetics sandbox, built for iPad.
Eighteen real species, humans among them, live on a procedurally generated island. Each animal carries a diploid genome of 59 loci on a linkage map; its anatomy, physiology and behavior are expressed from that genome. Energy flows from a regrowing vegetation grid through herbivores to predators. Natural and sexual selection, drift, mutation and migration act on real alleles, and new species split off when populations diverge. You can pause at any time to edit genomes, run Punnett crosses, or splice body parts between species into chimeras whose physics honestly constrain what they can do.
Features
- World: an instanced low-poly 3D ecosystem with about 600 simulated animals, running in a Web Worker.
- Animals walk, swim, fly and hop on procedurally assembled bodies.
- Season and climate are both simulated; there are four catastrophes: drought, ice age, meteor and plague.
- Genetics:
- Diploid inheritance with dominance, epistasis (MC1R × TYRP1 gives 9:3:4), regulatory loci and recessive load.
- MHC heterozygote advantage.
- Recombination via Haldane's map function.
- Sex determination: XY, ZW, or temperature-dependent (crocodile).
- Mutations: point, indel, duplication and regulatory.
- Ecology:
- Kleiber metabolism and Hirt running speeds.
- Predation with stalking, vigilance, the confusion effect and optimal prey size.
- Carrion, disease, territoriality, and heritable behavior.
- Humans: Homo sapiens evolves under the same rules, with UV-driven pigmentation, lactase persistence, and culture as a second inheritance channel. An optional Human impact layer adds hunting, land clearing, farming and herding.
- Speciation: spatial demes with sustained FST divergence. Daughter lineages appear live in the Phylogeny workspace.
- Labs:
- Genome Editor: live phenotype preview, undo/redo.
- Cross Lab: Punnett squares with linkage, and offspring distributions.
- Splice Lab: transplant wings, limbs, tails, fins and more; parts become heritable genes, and anatomy-derived stats update instantly.
- Any lab creature can be released into the world.
- Charts: population, biodiversity (Shannon H′), trait means and distributions, allele frequencies, heterozygosity, births/deaths/mutations, and climate.
- Persistence:
- Autosave to IndexedDB, plus named saves.
.modulo file export and import.- Compressed share links for worlds and genomes.
- Hands-on keeper tools (the Animals panel,
B):
- Tap the ground to place animals of any species.
- Feed one animal or all of them, and remove a species or clear the whole island.
- Set a maximum population for any species.
- Set daily rations such as "enough food for 10 humans".
- Pick two animals and breed them on the spot.
- Fast-forward 1, 5 or 10 generations.
- Breeding Zoo: a fenced paddock with a pond. The keeper feeds the animals, nobody gets eaten, and you decide who breeds. Mini Island is a small, battery-friendly world.
- Low battery mode: the battery button in the top bar.
- Caps rendering at 30 fps at native resolution, with no shadows or effects.
- Slows the simulation's ticks.
- Scenarios: Breeding Zoo, Mini Island, Temperate Island, African Savanna, Archipelago Speciation, Ice Age, Human Arrival (megafauna overkill), Hardy–Weinberg Lab and Founder Effect.
All 18 species (Splice Lab chimeras use the same procedural parts):
The science, the simplifications and the data sources are documented in docs/SCIENCE.md.
Controls
| Touch | Keyboard |
|---|
| Orbit / pan / zoom | 1-finger drag / 2-finger drag / pinch | Arrows / WASD / = - |
| Select / follow / menu | Tap / double-tap / long-press | F follows, Esc clears |
| Place / breed / feed | Animals panel, inspector, long-press | B opens the panel, G skips a generation |
| Play / pause, step, speed | Time dock | Space, ., [ ] |
| Workspaces | Left rail | 1–5 |
| Panels | Dock tabs | I E C, \ |
| Undo / redo (editor) | Toolbar | ⌘Z, ⇧⌘Z |
| Save | World menu | ⌘S |
| Everything else | Commands button | ⌘K, ? for all shortcuts |
Tip: in Safari on iPad, choose Share → Add to Home Screen for a fullscreen, app-like experience. The guided tour can be replayed from the World menu.
Run locally
pnpm install
pnpm dev # http://localhost:3000
pnpm check # lint + typecheck + unit tests
pnpm build && pnpm test:e2e # iPad smoke tests (Playwright)
Requires Node 22+ and pnpm 10.
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
