This isn't being marked as a question, because I'm seeing this as more of a postmortem.

What happened?

On the 16th May 2011, this game was announced as Creatures 4 and consisted of a massively nebulous idea that, "[The Developer, et al] are set to deliver a new Creatures game that maintains the characteristics of the earlier games. It will be free-to-play and available on PC/Mac and iOS platforms - iPod, iPhone and iPad. A collector gift box full of surprises will also be created."

This announcement gathered mild interest. After all, the last Creatures game to have been was back in 2001.

Time passes. With the realizations of such nightmares as EA's Mobile Dungeon Keeper, Candy Crush and all 1204 unneeded spinoffs, the realization that the game would be "free-to-play" sank in, sinking many hopes. A demo is released in 2011 to audiences at Gamescom, but it would appear nobody actually noticed or wanted Creatures online.

Why?

Probably because the Norns were ugly as orthodoxy (Because sin tends to look very good), and the previously [url=http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/creatures/images/c/ca/SheeManual.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110706150426]image of the Shee, being mighty alien creatures who had such power as to govern life itself to such a degree as to be able to produce unique species and created the steam engine before the wheel because they wanted tea, were revealed, or perhaps even unmasked as some dumb unmysterious, friendly looking humanoid.

Now you might be wondering how exactly a game, whose entire purview is complexity would be able to be reliable crammed onto so many simultaneous platforms while retaining the depth of the previous entries. Just as a bit of a note, Creatures Exodus (Creatures 3 & Docking Station) is an impressively small 366 MBs. How this is possible is simply a feat of very good programming and a scripting language that handles most everything, CAOS.

This is a question the developer has never gotten around to answering. Speaking of things that never will occur, there was a soft launch due in 2015. (Apparently never verified by either developer or publisher.)

And if you check your local app store, you can find that as of this post, Creatures Online hasn't launched.

Why?

Probably because the game jumped developers again and is now in the hands of a Dutch company, working with notable oldie, Nolan Bushnell.

Do I think Creatures Online is going to launch? Well, on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being sometime during afternoon teatime and 10 being the Ovation Office Suite, I'm going to place it at 11, reserved for special cases, like the Phantom console.

One has to wonder how the development of such a thing would be so complicated with developer jumps, a delivery failure, and now a change of IP rights, how everyone involved has absolutely failed to capitalize on this franchise.

Does anyone else have added facts, corrections, or other discussions to add? Feel free to speak your mind on this fascinating failure of game development.

Looks like they abandoned doing a PC Creatures Online. Looks like they are aiming for a Creatures game for Mobile Devices. Likely still going for the Free-to-Play model. Last I heard, they where throwing around an idea of using micro-transactions to purchase each Norn. There is a facebook page where they last posted around June 2016. I have no idea if the game is in development or not.

If it's anything else like Spil Games mobile games, it's not going to be as advanced as Exodus, just a care-for-your-pet kinda thing.

What I understand is that it was dumped onto Spil Games from Fishing Cactus, and now they're making "Creatures Family", whatever the hell that entails.

Should just call it Creatures Forever at this point.

Turns out it probably got canned.

So in the meantime, Spiel games is working on another WOMBAT.

Good news is, the creator of the series is working on an A-life sim himself.

Just like AM2R shows, if they can't make it, just throw your hands into the air and build it yourself.

The fun part of it this game was visually better and a slight upgraded version of the previous games. There is a lot of possibilities and options to make a new creature game.

And we are in 2018 now and they still does not made any progress. This is a mystery how professional developers " or atleast those call themself " cannot deliver a simple game which has already built everything what needed to make diversity and complexity.

If I want to play with norns pretty much still using docking station which is a shame there is 17 year passed since the last meaningful game and still there is no a creature game. I was 15 years old in 2001 and I liked creatures as a series along with other games and I am an old timer gamer.

If the original devs or a much famous and talented developer could have been work on the project maybe we could play now with the creatures again.

Not sure how the modding community of the creatures 3 and docking station stiill exists and working on any mod but these were much more activen in the early 2000's and 2011-15 around. Last I checked 2013 was the latest date for mods but after they announced the creatures 4 I was a little bit hyped but as a no core fan of the series I managed to survive with different games but I find pretty shameful to the actual devs whom worked on this game and how failed to deliver a game.

And as you op said the docing station with it's 366 megabyte was a small to medium game in size that time just compared the thing game was 428 megabyte or so which released around 2000-2001. Still a small game and despite that it was very complex. They just should have to look into the files and check each how works and basically just copy paste. I know any developement different and making new stuff from scratch takes time but this game should not have to be 5-10 g byte like the nowaday games and should not be too complex just like the older ones.

As new races beyond ettins and grendels they could have just add some different kind of pet to manage but when I saw it will be free to play then all my hope lost.

Just riddicoulos how they managed this whole story and how failed to deliver the game. A game like this should have been out in 2-3 year most. Even less if you consider there are developers whom can make huge games within 1-2 year.

Are there any more games like this or is it another case of the slowed progress of PC gaming.

Ah, to put it neatly, the A-life concept is kinda hard to capture the ready spirit of. Especially with living DNA/genomes.

But the original creator is working on a project

i really hope that if there is a new release it's a PC game like the others, mobile would just defeat the whole point of the thing.