# Setup and review

This page is derived from the [canonical player-guide](/learn/player-guide); its content has one source of truth.

## Choose a starter or describe your world

The `/play` entry previews Resource competition, Hunters and prey, and Recurring scarcity. Each uses an explicit supported configuration and real generation-0 state, with an inhabited square habitat, resource measurements and species relationships. **Review this world** opens editable conditions; it does not start a run. Starters default to fixed rules and make no setup or runtime model requests unless you explicitly select adaptive policy. Their shared seed makes the configurations inspectable, but their multiple differences are not a controlled one-condition comparison.

Choose **Describe your own world** for the three-question setup. Starter browsing does not require prose, and switching between browsing and the custom form preserves unsubmitted answers. These authored presets are distinct from a failed interpretation of a requested world; a rejected custom setup does not become seedable just because presets exist.

## Start from the questions

The setup asks three short questions. Each answer is trimmed, must contain 1–140 characters, and is interpreted into a fixed vocabulary—not compiled as a rule.

- **What exists in this world?** Resource abundance and distribution; phrases such as “rich,” “scarce,” “clustered,” “oasis,” “seasonal,” and “cycle” map to configured environment choices. Founder balance can also be inferred from “prey heavy” or “abundant prey.”
- **What threatens life here?** Selects a hazard (`drought`, `toxin`, `heat`, `crowding`), volatility (`stable`, `pulsing`, `chaotic`), and related pressure. “toxic,” “heat,” “competition,” “pulse,” and “unpredictable” are examples recognized by deterministic setup.
- **What should evolution favor?** Weights five priorities: `survive`, `replicate`, `cooperate`, `explore`, `adapt`. Words such as “endure,” “offspring,” “share,” “spread,” and “diversify” influence the mapping. Weights are normalized to sum to one.

The mapping is deliberately literal and limited. For example, “toxic” selects the toxin hazard, but does not create a new chemical simulation. Unmatched prose falls back to the documented defaults; it is not an instruction to the engine.

## Try the recorded preset

The in-game **Explore deterministic preset** button fills these exact answers:

```text
World: Rich mineral pools with abundant prey
Threat: Predator packs hunt through pulsing droughts
Reward: Diversify while prey and predators coexist
```

Review the resulting setup before starting. The preset is an example, not a guaranteed winning strategy. With no server API key, the game still runs using labeled deterministic fallback choices; a live interpretation may vary among allowed values.

## Review before starting

The review step exposes the generated configuration and its source/provenance. Check resource conditions, fitness weights, founder balance and strategies, and the species interaction graph. Setup establishes initial conditions; it does not guarantee population survival.

**Restart** in the running world's controls reruns the current answers, config, and seed; it is not a new randomized setup. At completion, **Change objective** returns to the third setup question; reload the page to begin again with all three answers. To share/replay an accepted completed run, use **Copy challenge link**. Replay starts from the recorded choices and seed instead of asking the model to interpret them again.