Do you like speculative evolution and/or designing creatures? Are you fascinated by ancient communities on the internet, and/or does the idea of permanently contributing something to one appeal to you? Because if so, dear Tumblr, do I have a recommendation for you.

Sagan 4 is a really old forum community worldbuilding project–dating back to 2006, having been made in the hype of Spore as basically a way of playing it manually before the game actually came out. Miraculously, the project actually kept going after that–even after Spore came out, it continued on and even gained new members, producing over 5000 unique species made by over 100 contributors over its several hundred million year in-universe history and still going to this day nearly 16 years later.

And ANYONE can join and submit their own species.

As a collaborative project, Sagan 4 has a myriad of species ranging from realistic to frightening to whimsical and made by creators of all skill levels, all of which can be found on the Sagan 4 Wiki. Though it can be a little intimidating for newcomers (and even just readers), I’ve found as someone who only joined 3 years ago that it’s something you learn more about as you go along–I’m still discovering new things even after contributing well over 100 species, and not even veteran members know everything about what the project contains.

Even if you are not an artist, Sagan 4 might still interest you if you enjoy reading worldbuilding or, perhaps even more so, if you have an interest in old forum communities and lost media–because boy does Sagan 4 have some community history and even ancient drama, much of which is lost or fragmented.

If Sagan 4 interests you, here are the links: