So to flesh out the main ideas of Birthdays a little, you manage cubes of land in order to populate them with lifeforms. You’ll start small and get to grips with deforming the terrain, raising some parts, lowering others and learning how to create rivers, waterfalls and oceans. There are also items you can collect and use so you’ll learn how to spawn, attract and evolve life forms. You start by nudging phytoplankton and zooplankton into being, then start to progress. Stromatolites appear, maybe some cyclomedusa, then a kind of trilobite. You can capture all of these organisms and add them to your library, hence the Pokemon comparison earlier. Wada-san also mentioned Doraemon – a Japanese manga series in which the main character (a robotic cat) has an earthmaker gadget – as one of the inspirations.
Great game !
Thank you !