Life & fun · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Ecosim – A cellular ecosystem simulator toy for Linux written in C
An interactive ecosystem and evolution simulator written in C and OpenGL, for GNU/Linux. - connor-brooks/ecosim
Ecosim is a cellular ecosystem simulator for Linux users interested in observing artificial life systems. Written in C, the program models how organisms interact and evolve within a simulated environment. Users can… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Ecosim – A cellular ecosystem simulator toy for Linux written in C launched in 2020; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
2023 · plant.max-richter.dev · its alternatives →
- 2TA
2014 · rileyjshaw.com · its alternatives →
- 3
pouët.net - your online demoscene resource
2020 · pouet.net · its alternatives →
- 4LS
2021 · joelthelion.github.io · its alternatives →
- 5AG
2016 · leverlabs.io · its alternatives →
- 6GB
2025 · attentionmech.github.io · its alternatives →
- 7MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
- 8
Hey HN, just wanted to share a fun, vibe-coded Friday night experiment: a little playground for writing cellular automata in a subset of Rust, which is then compiled into WGSL. Since it lets you dynamically change parameters while the simulation is running via a TUI, it's easy to discover weird behaviors without remembering how you got there. If you press "s", it will save the complete history to a JSON file (a timeline of the parameters that were changed at given ticks), so you can replay it and regenerate the discovery. You can pan/zoom, and while the main simulation window is in…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9EA
I built an artificial life simulator that fits in one HTML file (~1400 lines ~50KB) with Claude Opus 4.6, interestingly, I didn't even ask it to build the game itself, I've requested to create the software that didn't exist before and not use any dependencies, third-party libraries or ask questions. Firstly Opus 4.6 made photoshop clone that barely worked, but had nice and neat UI with all common features for the image editor, then I've called that crap and asked to really build someting that wasn't there, it made Emergent there. Please check it out and tell what you think, of course it's a…
Feb 2026 · emergent-ivory.vercel.app · its alternatives →
- 10
A minimal C runtime for Linux i386 & x86_64. Contribute to lpsantil/rt0 development by creating an account on GitHub.
2015 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
An implementation of Wireworld (Cellular Automata) in Nim using SDL2 - JHonaker/wireworld-nim
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
I made a web game inspired by Geoguessr and Wordle, where you get shown a 3D model of a random human protein each day, and you have to triangulate its gene name using similarity clues. My background is in wet lab molecular biology and I intend this game to be engaging mostly to other biologists. But if you're outside the field, I'm interested to know if you can still solve it with browser use LLMs, and if you learned something interesting doing so. Let me know what you think. I made it with Claude over the last 2 months. My coding experience is limited to basic python data analysis and…
Dec 2025 · geneguessr.brinedew.bio · its alternatives →
- 13
A research project simulating the evolution of virtual corals - 2018.
2018 · joelsimon.net · its alternatives →
- 14
A framework for multi-agent reinforcement learning. - cool-RR/marley
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
An interactive simulation of Richard Dawkins' biomorphs, virtual creatures that evolve through artificial selection.
2014 · emergentmind.com · its alternatives →
- 16HB
2012 · chrisp.gr · its alternatives →
- 17
🌊 Julia software for fast, friendly, flexible, ocean-flavored fluid dynamics on CPUs and GPUs - CliMA/Oceananigans.jl
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Arduino UNO-compatible robotic simulation of the C. elegans nematode - nategri/nematoduino
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
I’ve been working on a browser-based evolutionary simulation as a personal experiment. Organisms adapt to environmental pressure over time, and there are no explicit goals or scoring, the system is open-ended and runs continuously. I built this mainly to challenge myself and to explore how to surface simulation behavior and statistics in a way that stays readable rather than overwhelming. As a side effect, it’s also something my kids enjoys watching run. Curious what resonates and what doesn’t, and happy to answer questions about the design or tradeoffs.
Jan 2026 · soupof.life · its alternatives →
- 20
Simple Rust implementation of Conway's Game of Life - brundonsmith/life
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21
Hi HN, when learning Golang (and topology), I ported a simple GOL in C (https://github.com/Jeadie/GoL) into Go. I then added a bunch of features - Playing on other fundamental polygons (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_polygon#Examples_o...) - Considering all possible update rules (of which, there are many). Looking to get back to this project soon. Would love some feedback + ideas.
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Simulate a lifeform in the terminal. Contribute to p-e-w/ternimal development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Hi HN, we built world-model-optimizer, an open source tool to continually improve a specialized model for an agent. It does this by simulating production tool responses through text world modeling (similar to QwenAgentWorld, summary here https://x.com/silennai/status/2073887455884058814). We can then use this to train a router for frontier, OS, and local models (use defaults or pick which ones to optimize against). wmo ingests agent traces, builds the simulation, embeds the traces, runs different models you choose against the simulation scenarios, and then uses a KNN…
Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24
A fast, rootless sandbox and virtual resource runtime for any workload, including untrusted and AI-generated code. Daemonless: a real, kernel-enforced container in ~3.5 ms from an OCI image, out of one static binary - getkern/kern
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Simulate 3D plants in the browser alternatives
- Terra, a JS framework for cellular automata and biological simulations alternatives
- Game of Life in 32 bytes of assembler alternatives
- Life Simulation Written in Rust alternatives
- A genetic simulator for artificial life alternatives
- Genetic Boids Web Simulation alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →