What it is
A cat-and-mouse game that never ends
One side has to catch, the other has to get away, and they need to come up with more clever ways to do both. There are no matches and no score: a touched mouse dies, a starving cat dies. Power Play is a project inside Throng.
The Cell
Volt and Sol
The Cell is a flat, bounded square with hard edges and nothing in it but Volts and Sols. Every animal is the same small circle with the same brain design; the only difference is which kind of battery it is.
Sol (solar)
Recharges by itself at a steady rate, up to a full battery. Never needs to eat. The hunted.
Volt (lithium)
Loses charge every tick just by living. The only way to gain charge is from a Sol. The hunters.
Moving costs charge for both, more the faster they go. Anything at zero charge is dead.
The charge law
One law, from a distance to a touch
Charge flows from a Sol to a Volt, faster the closer they are, and at a touch all of it goes at once, so a touch is not a special rule: it is the same law at zero distance. The trickle from being near a Sol is always weaker than a Volt's drain. It slows dying; it cannot prevent it.
Every unit of charge is accounted for, and a test checks the books every tick.
Senses and brain
Sight, hearing, smell, from the first tick
Each animal can see, hear and smell from the start. Whether it learns to use them is what evolution has to find out.
How we will know
The first check can fail
Evolved Volts must outlive random-brained Volts in the same Cell. If they do not, the Cell does not select, and nothing built on it means anything. Later checks: hand-written yardsticks, today's animals against their ancestors, and switching memory off to see whether anything changes.
Watch it
Live view
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Status
Where it stands
The experiment is specified. Nothing is built yet.