Getting Started with Creatures

Creatures can be rather daunting to get into, especially since it is an older game and therefore not always very intuitive to control. I figured I'd write up a simple guide for anyone looking to get into the series for the first time.

The games are now available on Steam, with Albian Years containing Creatures 1 and 2, and Creatures 3 being considered a paid DLC for Docking Station (although back in the day, DS was considered the free DLC for C3). The various official breeds for C3/DS, which you once had to pay for, are available as a free DLC pack as well. There is also Creatures Village, a spinoff intended for preschoolers.

The Steam releases are fairly robust, but it always pays to remember that these games came out between 1996 and 2001. Trying to run them at exceptionally large resolutions, or forcing other "modernities" on them may cause problems. In the case of Creatures 2, which is exceptionally finicky, just trying to get it to run properly on a modern machine at all can be an epic quest, but Creatures 1 and C3/DS can run on a toaster without issue so long as you respect the limitations brought on by their age.

As Docking Station is both free and the most newbie-friendly game in the series, that is what I will cover in this guide.

Note: I personally run older versions of the games from GOG.com, predating the Steam releases. I have heard tell that the Steam versions fix a few bugs, compatibility issues, and other such things, but I do not have personal experience with them. For instance, I am unsure whether the Steam version of DS includes online capabilities; since the original servers are long gone, for many years players had to download a mod that allowed offline play, which I still use today.

Once you create and enter your Docking Station world, you'll begin in the Meso, one of four rooms on the spaceship known as the Capillata, the setting of the game. I will begin with a brief explanation of the basic controls and interface of the game. 

1. The help option! When you click the help button, your cursor enters help mode.
   In help mode, left clicking an object will speak the name of the category the object belongs to (i.e. what creatures will call it, since they can't distinguish between objects of the same type). This is useful to know if you want to tell your creatures to interact with it, and will also contribute automatically to teaching any creature in earshot what the name of the object is.
   Right clicking while in help mode will open up a help box for the specific object, telling you more about what it is and what it does. I encourage you to explore the world using help mode right click!
2. A location shortcut icon. As you enter different rooms, new buttons will be added to the top of your screen. Clicking on them takes you immediately to the room in question. You can also scroll up and down with a mouse wheel to cycle through them.
3. This is Muco, the egg layer! This is how you get new creatures in your world. Clicking the face will cycle through available breeds, and clicking the gender symbols will select a gender. Clicking the bright blue egg button will create an egg with a bog-standard member of the selected gender and breed in it.
4. The Hand, your avatar in the world! More than just a cursor, this is how your creatures perceive and interact with you. You can also interact with the world; left click an object to interact with it, and right click to pick it up.
5. This glowing spot is the incubator pad. Eggs will hatch faster if placed here.
6. The creature menu. This is where you can see a list of all creatures in your world.
7. The options menu.
   
   

   Here you can set sound options at the top. Clicking the speaker/musical note icon switches the volume bar between sound effects and music, so you can control the volume independently.
   At the top right you can see the population and breeding limits. The population limit is the maximum number of creatures in your world, while the breeding limit prevents new pregnancies from occurring once the population hits it. You can modify these values at any time.
   You can also change your name, if you would prefer your creatures to call you something other than "hand." You can also play with the RGB values of the hand if you so desire, for purely cosmetic purposes.
8. Your inventory. This panel slides out to reveal an empty box, which you can place objects in to carry with you wherever you go.

You can use the arrow keys to move around a room, and click on a door, like the one shown to the right, to move between rooms. After you see a room for the first time, you can still access it with the door if you want, but you can also use the location shortcut buttons to teleport directly to a room.

The glowing icons on the door are a feature unique to Docking Station - species locks. If the icon is red, the indicated species of creature cannot go through the door on that side. From top to bottom, the images are: a Grendel, an Ettin, and a Norn. These are the three types of creatures you can care for in this game, although there is only one official breed of Grendel (the Banshee Grendel from the free breed pack DLC) and no official Ettins at all in Docking Station. One breed of both species is included in Creatures 3.
Technically there is a fourth category of creature, the Geat, but no official Geat breeds exist. Only fan-made content uses this category, and it's got some glitches associated with it, so be careful.

Another important feature of the Meso is the Learning Machine, in the lower right corner of the room. This, too, is a unique feature of Docking Station. In all other games in the series, creatures must be taught how to speak, by demonstrating concepts on a computer and speaking the names of objects they're looking at. Docking Station does away with that inconvenience by allowing a creature to immediately learn all language simply by using (or "pushing") the Learning Machine.

If your creature is reluctant to use the machine, clicking on the button at the bottom repeatedly may draw their attention to it.

You may also wish to take note of the Hoverdoc, a portable medical kit. I recommend stashing this in your inventory so you can pull it out whenever you need it. Simply drop it over a creature and it will hover alongside them, displaying medical information. You can also detect the presence of bacteria and use the hoverdoc to spray antibiotics into the air if needed.

When you're ready, you can hatch your first creature. You'll see a notification icon depicting a cracked egg pop up in the upper left corner of your screen. This is a life event notification, and they will show up whenever a creature becomes pregnant, lays an egg, hatches, or dies. Clicking the notification will immediately take you to the relevant creature or egg.

The panel on the left shows the face and gender of the currently selected creature. The bar underneath shows its name. Clicking on either one will open the creature's bio, where you can name it and view information about it.

The icons on the right of the bio panel switch between tabs. The scroll on the left is the main tab, with basic stats. The egg to its right is the creature's life history. The camera is a tab that lets you take pictures of the creature, which can be assigned to its gravestone when it finally dies if you have Creatures 3 (there is no graveyard in DS standalone). The Norn on the right is the genetics tab which shows a little (and I do mean a little; it barely scratches the surface) genetic information about the creature.

When a creature is selected, a small red arrow appears above them. The object they're currently looking at is similarly indicated with a small green arrow.

You can interact with your creature in several ways. Right clicking on them will grab their hand, allowing you to lead them around. Holding shift while right clicking will allow you to pick them up off the ground.

Left clicking on their head will give them a rewarding pat, while left clicking on their bottom will punish them with a spanking. This is how you can train your creatures to do or not do certain things. 

You can also type to speak to them, but remember that their vocabulary is limited and that they don't distinguish between objects of the same type.

The other three rooms in the Capillata are the Hallway, the Comms Room, and the Teleporter Room. Both of the latter two were primarily used for online functionality that has long since gone away. Originally the gimmick of Docking Station was that creatures could teleport between your world and other people's.

The cage in the Teleporter Room may no longer be useful for warping creatures from world to world (unless perhaps the Steam version has restored this functionality), but you can still use it to quarantine your creatures and to dispense antibiotics, and creatures contained within can have slightly more advanced medical stats displayed on the blue screen above than you would normally get from the Hoverdoc. You can also generate food inside the cage using a button, but this is not strictly necessary, as a portable automatic food dispenser can be found inside.

You can also find the teleporter hub, which links to the three portable teleport pads on the Capillata, and a training dummy here. Clicking the bell on the training dummy's head changes its species. It can be used to teach creatures how to interact with a specific species without actually exposing them to that species - useful if you're afraid one might try to kill another!

The Comms Room was once a social hub for interacting with other players. Nowadays, it's useful primarily for being home to the object injector. The injector's icon is shown to the left. When the injector is active, you can use it to add objects into the world that aren't there by default (and usually, remove them again if you so desire). This is generally how you add downloaded content (both official and fan-made) to your game.

This just about covers the bare-bones basics of the game. You'll need additional tools to view and edit genetics or modify objects in the game, but you should be set to raise, breed, and play with creatures, and from this point on you should be able to find your way on your own using the help button and the Creatures Wiki, linked on the sidebar.

Good luck, and have fun!