On a distant alien planet, eons of volcanic activity and meteor impacts have led to the development of a new phenomenon in the universe.
Life.
Simple microbes reside in the deep regions of the ocean. You are the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) on this planet.
To survive in this hostile world, you will need to collect any compounds that you can find and evolve across generations to compete against the other species of microbes.
Which very clearly refers to the vents start. For the different starts I think the message needs to be adjusted.
Here’s my take on warm pond:
On a distant alien planet, eons of random chemical reactions building up to self-replicating molecules have led to the development of a new phenomenon in the universe.
Life.
Simple microbes reside in shallow warm ponds. You are the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) on this planet.
To survive in this hostile world, you will need to collect any compounds that you can find and evolve across generations to compete against the other species of microbes.
And panspermia:
On a distant alien planet, a meteor has impacted after travelling vast astronomical distances carrying with itself the seeds needed for a new phenomenon on the planet.
Life.
Simple microbes reside near the impact site. You are the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) on this planet.
To survive in this hostile world, you will need to collect any compounds that you can find and evolve across generations to compete against the other species of microbes.
Thoughts? Did I get the scientific flavour details right?
About the panspermia I would like to note that it may occur in a planet which already contains life. There is a funny sort of sciency hypothesis that questions whether octopodes may or may not came from space! (spoiler: they probably didn’t)
Panspermia when there is already life could be a really cool feature, could be a cool thing that happens infrequently when starting a game. Maybe change the welcome message in that case as well.
Assuming “chemical evolution” is a real term that we can use, sure that sounds better.
This is going to be very niche case because all the rest of the game assumes the player is the LUCA, so this has a bunch of implications elsewhere. If someone truly wants this (I don’t really see the return on effort here), I’d say this should be a fourth start option.
I was thinking the other way around. Something like, if the player would like to, some of their fossilized organisms may (as you said) infrequently arise in the current game/run.
