What changed in the games, in plain words. We write here when something a child would notice has changed, not on every small fix.
A fuller meadow, and water you can walk into
New
There is more living in Evolab now, and more kinds of it. A child looking for a cow or an owl usually finds one, and the meadow is really eaten: a patch a herd has stood on for a while looks like it.
Grass, flowers and toadstools in every game. In some of them the ground was bare before.
Water an animal walks into. It wades in from the bank and goes deeper as the bottom drops away. The ones built for swimming keep their heads up; the ones that are not stay where they can still stand. When a pond freezes over, they walk across it.
Changed
A sleeping animal lies down. It folds its legs under itself and rests on the ground, instead of standing there with its eyes shut.
The lily pads on the ponds are leaves now, with a flower open on some of them.
A new game, and more animal voices
New
Hopo, a new game. Your child picks an animal and walks it through the same world Evolab lives in: between the trees, up onto the rocks, down to the water. Small tasks come by themselves, told in pictures: find this one and feed it, bring water, climb up there, hide under a tree, bring the little one home. Three tasks done and the animal goes into its house, and comes out a little different, another coat, another size.
More animals have a voice now: the bee buzzes, the dog yaps, the elephant trumpets, the lion and the tiger roar, the wolf howls. As before, anything you can hear you can also see, so nothing is lost with the sound off.
In Evolab a calf now takes after both parents, the way real animals do: it can get its size from one side and its coat from the other, and a rare coat can skip a generation and come back. Hunters keep their place in the world now instead of dying out, and no single kind takes over.
Changed
The forest keeps sounding on the start screen of Evolab, so the birds do not stop the moment the menu opens.
On a phone, Hopo sits better in the hand: the camera stands a little higher and further back, the small map is smaller and out of the way of the controls, and running is easier to find on the stick. Push the knob past the dashed ring and the animal runs; the knob turns orange while it does.
Every press answers
New
An update button in the header, next to the settings. When a new version of the site is out, one tap fetches it. Without internet the button says so and leaves everything as it was. Pulling the page down works the same way.
Changed
The games listen better to every hand. Whatever a child presses, the game carries on toward the good part, and holding one button keeps it going. The settings open from the keyboard now, and the site is easier to read, with larger text and stronger colors.
The animals in Evolab have real voices now. Cows moo, ducks quack, the owl hoots, and eating, drinking and being born each have their own quiet sound. Everything you can hear is also visible, so nothing is lost with the sound off.
Evolab animals keep their own hours now. Night animals like the owl wake when it gets dark and hunt while the day animals sleep, and a sleeping animal truly lies still.
Site updates arrive on the first try now, and offline stays dependable: with no internet everything opens as before, and a failed download can never spoil what is already installed.
Sound, and settings you set once
New
Background music. Quiet melodies to choose from in the settings. Nothing plays until you pick one, and the same melody follows into every game.
Sound comes in three parts now, each with its own slider: what your child touches, the world around them, and the melody. You can keep the taps audible and turn the rest right down.
Evolab keeps the world your child left. Close the tab and come back tomorrow: the same animals are living in the same place.
Changed
The settings are one panel now, grouped by the question a parent walks in with: it is too loud, it is too busy to look at, or it runs badly on this tablet. The language sits in there too, in every game. What you set is remembered everywhere, so you set it once.
The settings panel and the start screens look the same in every game now. They used to drift apart, and a parent had to work each one out again.
The animals in Evolab do more on their own. They keep to herds and watch out for each other, they hide better when their coat matches the ground, and each one chooses between grazing, drinking, hunting, resting and getting out of the heat. Hunters go after whatever has become common, so nobody takes over the world for long.
On an older phone or tablet the games now simplify the picture by themselves, so the world keeps moving instead of stuttering.