Game: eCambrian

Sink or Swim in the Cambrian Dating Pool

It's survival of the fittest in eCambrian. Woo a variety of Cambrian creatures and challenge your prehistorical zoology knowledge in the ultimate test of evolutionary fitness: dating. If you get to know them well enough, they might just give you their number...

The Facts Behind the Game

The fossil record of the Cambrian Period (approx. 541 to 485 million years ago) records the relatively rapid and sudden appearance of the earliest fossils of a large variety of living things. In fact, nearly all the major animal body plans known to science “exploded” on to the scene and made their first appearances in the fossil record during a remarkable 30 - 40 million year stretch of time known to palaeontologists as the “Cambrian Explosion”. eCambrian highlights some of the weird and wonderful creatures whose fossils date from this time; some which look vaguely familiar, and others unlike anything alive today!

The ROM Connection

The future Dawn of Life permanent gallery at the ROM will tell the story of life on Earth - from the origins of life to the origins of dinosaurs. It will showcase not only samples from Earth’s early history when life first started, but key fossils throughout the Earth’s history that reveal how life diversified over time and faced major crises. This gallery is essentially the ‘missing link’ between the Teck Suite of Galleries: Earth’s Treasures and the James and Louise Temerty Galleries of the Age of Dinosaurs on the second floor of the ROM.

What's a Game Jam?

At a ROM Game Jam, teams of developers spend a weekend at the ROM learning from collections and curators and use those ideas to build fun games inspired by the museum.  With only two days to research and create their games, the results can be weird, wacky, and downright wonderful!

eCambrian was created by Spongelab Interactive.

Game Info

(Please note this game is only playable on a computer and is not optimized for mobile devices.)

# of players: 1

Platform: Online

Controls: Mouse, touchscreen

To play:

• Follow the "Go to the game" link and click "Start".

Go to the game! ►