| Total Award | Studio Funding | Sponsor | Title | CoPIs | PI | Start | End | Projects |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $936,605 | $234,492 | NSF | Collaborative Research: BEE: Ecological and coevolutionary feedbacks in multi-mutualist communities. | Robison | D. Althoff | 4/2022 | 4/2025 | TBD |
| $5,830,709 | $400,000 | NSF | RII Track-2 FEC: Leveraging Big Data to Improve Prediction of Tick-Borne Disease Patterns and Dynamics. | Robison, Harris, Shi | X. Ma | 9/2020 | 9/2024 | Outbreak Simulator, Project Drider, TwinStick |
| $74,700 | $74,700 | IGEM | Darwin’s Demons mobile. | Soule | Robison | 7/2019 | 7/2020 | Evolvy Bugs |
| $33,801 | $33,801 | NSF BEACON | Salmon Run: An Evolutionary Ecology Educational Game. | Robison, Blackwood, Soule | R. Pennock | 7/2018 | 7/2019 | Salmon Run |
| $67,600 | $67,600 | IGEM | An evolutionary approach to procedural opponent generation in video games. | Soule | Robison | 7/2017 | 7/2018 | Darwin's Demons, Project Hastur |
| $99,328 | $99,328 | NSF BEACON | Teaching evolution through game based simulation. | Robison | Soule | 5/2016 | 8/2017 | Darwin's Demons, Project Hastur |
| $65,000 | $65,000 | Vandal Ideas Program | Polymorphic Games – an interdisciplinary game design studio. | Soule, Hall, Bukvich, Caisely, Bennett, Nicotra, Kelly-Riley, Tanner, Clevely, Bird | Robison | 7/2016 | 8/2017 | Darwin's Demons |
POLYMORPHIC GAMES
Polymorphic Games is an experimental video game development studio based at the University of Idaho. We develop video games, interactive simulations, and visualizations that feature STEM concepts as core mechanics.
Our main focus is Evolutionary Games that feature enemies that adapt to the player using mathematical models of biological evolution.
We have also collaborated with many different researchers to help them represent their model systems as interactive simulations or dynamic visualizations.
EVOLUTIONARY GAMES
Instead of pre-programming, scripted enemy behaviors to escalate difficulty, our games use populations of creatures that evolve specifically to beat your strategy. Each creature has its own traits that it can pass onto its offspring. After you beat one wave of creatures, the creatures that were the hardest to beat reproduce and you’ll fight their offspring in the next wave. Evolving traits include features like size, speed, damage, resistances, and behavior. We use real principles of evolutionary biology to create a model that includes all the components of real evolution — variation, inheritance, selection, and time — just operating at a much faster pace. This creates dynamic enemies that adapt to how YOU play the game. We just give evolution the space to work.
DEVELOPMENT MODEL
Our studio is based on the University of Idaho campus and populated by undergraduate students. A university setting is the one place where you can find programmers, artists, writers, musicians, marketers, and biologists — everyone you need to make a video game with foundations in evolutionary biology. We hire insanely talented teams of undergraduate students to develop our games. This gives us a team that can think outside the box, and it provides a great student experience. Our employees get to build skills in communication, leadership, and collaboration that they take with them when they graduate, all while honing their skills in their own trade.
SUPPORT
Polymorphic Games has been made possible through grants and support from the following: