SimLife is a simulation game designed to simulate environments, biology, evolution, and ecosystems. The game challenges you to solve problems presented to you in six different scenarios:

Desert to Forest:See what it takes to change a desert into a lush forest.

Battle of the Sexes: Experience evolution. Why are most animal populations half male and half female?

Feast and Famine: Learn about food chains. What does it take to balance an ecosystem that contains plants and plant eaters.

Carnovoria: Learn about food webs. Add carnivores to your ecosystem and see what happens.

Terrible Lizards: What happened to the dinosaurs?

March of the Mutants: Use a random set of genes to build a creature.

SimLife also includes the option of setting up your own ecosystem and carrying out an experiment that you design. This section of the program is called "Experimental Module."

SimLife has several different levels of play.
Game Level: try to solve the scenarios
Play level: build your own worlds
Experimental level: control the laws of physics and manipulate plants and animals at the genetic level.
Each challenge that you choose can be played at five difficulty levels from beginner to expert.

SimLife contains an on-screen tutorial. When the game is started click on "tutorial" for a quick tour of the basic features. An important feature to remember is that control F will move you on to the next step of the tutorial when you are ready.

Many youth will resist using the tutorial feature - they will just want to "play" the game. You may want to have them play a game to help them learn about the different features and possibilities of SimLife. Have the youth play "Getting Started with SimLife."