Everest Pipkin: The Barnacle Goose Experiment

The Barnacle Goose Experiment is an idle clicker game set in a world where spontaneous generation is commonplace.

As a player, you are a researcher studying the creation of new and living things out of raw and non-living matter. In order to undertake this work without experimental contamination, you are locked inside of a hermetically sealed dome — entirely empty. As such, the only raw material for experimentation is that of your own body.

Through the accretions of self, the slow learning of mechanical systems, and the simple duration of time, you must uncover the combinatory logic of spontaneous generation and make again a living world from a dead one.

Play The Barnacle Goose Experiment

The Barnacle Goose Experiment was commissioned as part of our Daisyworld programme which explores ideas and themes related to James Lovelock’s 1980 ‘Daisyworld’ computer simulation which demonstrated self-regulation on a planetary scale to illustrate his now famous Gaia theory. (See also Genetic Moo’s Daisyworld/B.U.S.T.)

Please note: The Barnacle Goose Experiment deals with adult themes and is intended for a mature audience.

Image: Screenshot from The Barnacle Goose Experiment (2022) by Everest Pipkin

Everest Pipkin is a game developer, writer, and artist from central Texas who lives and works on a fruit orchard in southern New Mexico. Their work both in the studio and in the garden follows themes of ecology, tool making, and collective care during collapse. When not at the computer in the heat of the day, you can find them in the hills spending time with their neighbours— both human and non-human.