Our take
orb.farm hands you an empty glass orb and a palette of things to put in it: sand, water, plants, algae and tiny creatures such as water fleas. Pour them in and the little world starts to live. Plants grow, creatures graze, and over time the orb either settles into balance or slowly falls out of it.
There is no score and no goal beyond keeping your ecosystem stable, and you can decorate it with driftwood or carve shapes into the sand. You can pause, speed up or reset at any point. Watching a balanced orb tick along is genuinely soothing, and the small chain of who eats what makes a quiet lesson in ecology.
It is a one-person hobby project with its code published openly, and it has a handmade, curious feel that bigger games rarely manage.
A first sitting
Start with sand, then water, then a few plants before any creatures. Add creatures slowly; an orb with too many grazers runs out of food.
Where to stop
An orb runs on its own and saves itself, so there is no point you have to reach. Leave it when it looks settled; it will be there next time. If you find yourself watching it to avoid something else, that is a good moment to close it.
Worth knowing
- It has no privacy policy page; it uses a cookieless analytics service and an error reporter.
- It runs in English.