instead influenced by other games in development at DMA, including Grand Theft Auto and Body Harvest (1998). Unlike those games, Space Station Silicon Valley does not take place in an open world; "they're a bugger to make," explained creative director Gary Penn. The objective of the team was to create a game where players were encouraged to try new things to see the outcome. The original concept for the game was that players would eat robots and become increasingly larger, retrospectively described by creative director lead artist Jamie Bryan as being similar to Cubivore: Survival of the Fittest (2002). Another early idea was for the in-game animals to consist of different parts, and destroying one animal would allow players to swap some features with their existing body; this was quickly discarded, as the team realised it would require extensive testing. The game was developed with little interference from upper management; programmer Obbe Vermeij said that "only after 18 months was there a push to get everything together into a finished game". Space Station Silicon Valley entered beta in August 1998, and was first released for Nintendo 64 on 21 October 1998. Baglow attributed the lengthy development cycle to the scale of the game, stating that "it's got to be fun". Due to a glitch, the game will crash in certain places if the Expansion Pak is present in the console. A Game Boy Color version of the game—a 2D remake of the original version—was released in Europe in late 1999; IGN's Tim Jones was critical of the port, criticising the gameplay and level design. The game was also ported to the PlayStation by Runecraft in June 2000, under the title Evo's Space Adventures, although the original development team had little input besides providing the models, codes and textures; a review by JeuxVideo.com criticised the port's poor gameplay and graphics, and it has elsewhere been described as "one of the laziest ports in the history of video games". Reception Space Station Silicon Valley was well received by critics. Review aggregator Metacritic calculated an average score of 83 out of 100 based on 10 reviews, for the Nintendo 64 version. Metacritic ranks the game within the top 10 Nintendo 64 games released in 1998. Praise was particularly directed at the game's intuitive mechanics, innovative level design, and comical concepts. The game was also applauded for the originality of its concept; IGNs Matt