Egglab

*The studio that led this project is now called Then Try This - you may find more up to date information on Egglab on their new website*

Egglab is an online computer game in which players search for hidden eggs against different backgrounds to help scientists make new discoveries concerning camouflage and its evolution. The game has been featured in The Economist, The Guardian and Popular Science and has been played by over 40,000 people.

The game is a genuine scientific experiment that anyone around the world with a computer, smartphone or tablet can take part in, with the aim to understand how different types of camouflage evolve in different habitat types and investigate how camouflage works to defeat predator vision and improve survival chances.

Egglab uses genetic programming to artificially evolve new patterns based on the behaviours of the humans who are playing the game. It distributes the pattern generation processing across browsers used by players, leaving the server only to store and sort the programs which represent the genomes of successful individuals.

Egglab is a free software game - the source code is here.