[danielvf]

Most of these look very designed, though "emerging" from simple rules on agents/particles.

Others look evolved inside the sandbox. (see doc here: https://alien-project.org/documentation/Evolutionexperiments...)

[harpiaharpyja]

One of the YouTube videos claims that they are self-replicating structures that were "evolved" in another simulation. So possibly the appearance of being designed comes from the fact that they were selected from the best of whatever was produced by that other simulation and placed together for a video.

[scottrogowski]

Not a biologist but I understand that isolation is an important factor of diversity and by default, this simulation wouldn't have that. So it makes sense to evolve in different areas and put them back into the same area.