i don't play video games. haven't since i was 16.

But wouldn't it appeal to Intelligent Design activists? Aside from the whole playing God thing?

I remember watching the inventor of this game describe it about a year ago, along with some demo movies of the game being played. It sounded like a neat idea, though I don't know how popular it will be among the shoot-em-up crowd. Maybe parents will feel better about getting their kids this game though, as they feel it's kind of educational.

it progresses up the evolutionary ladder

If it tells a story of evolution with a purpose -- achieving some higher life form -- then it's not really helping. Evolution has no end result or goal.

This is completely ID, the way you describe it - an intelligence (the player) intervenes and designs a spike! And then there is the teleological climb towards intelligence. This unfortunately does not sound like a good emulation of darwinian processes at all.

People always seem to translate Darwinian evolution into some kind of guided process - even when they try not to. "Survival of the Fittest" always seems to be imagined by some kind of ideal strong and beautiful humans, not a more neutral "right thing at the right time and place."

Natural selection is a much more amoral and non-aesthetic process. It's not the prettiest and smartest and most morally wholesome that persist, it's those who are able to go with the flow and pop out healthy babies. People automatically think more in terms of sexual selection: who they think should breed. Which Darwin described as far more arbitrary and potentially risky vis-a-vis natural selection.