There is a great book written 20 years ago by Steve Grand called "Creation: Life and how to make it"[1] it basically uses the game Creatures[2] as the testing environment for creating Artificial Life. There are some great thoughts in that book also about how science needs more cross disciplinary experts to connect the dot's between insights in one field and apply it to others.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Creation-Life-Make-Steve-Grand/dp/067...

[2] http://creatures.wikia.com/wiki/Creatures