This is what happens when you run evolution sim The Sapling for 7 days straight (F&F update edition) 

this… this is bringing me to tears… its what lil’ ol’ me exactly wanted when he played SPORE…

To make wings more probable to evolve You could try to make "semiwings" that evolve from arms, that would let creatures jump and glide a little to escape predators or to Hunt, and then this could evolve on to wings.

This is bloody amazing. Did you build all this by yourself? Is it a 1 person project?

I can't believe that we have the ability to create something like this now. This need to become the next big evo game to inspires other

This is really cool, there is a lot of emergence. I like specially how the plants with round leaves appeared due to selection pressure, then when there was less pressure they mutation was able to cover a lot of terrain and then because there was pressure again went back to the round leaves. As least that's my interpretation. Will you try again to see if you can get flying creatures to evolve?

If I’m gonna be honest this is my fav game. Also it would be cool for a omnivorous plant like the Venus fly trap .this is a game like spore and I like spore but In this game you also get to customize plants unlike spore we’re it’s only animals .this is definitely a 10/10 game

Bruh this is amazing, how am I only discovering this now? Definitely deserves more attention

What do you think of the ideas of large Maps mostly dominated by oceans and a world creation option to have either multiple continents or islands or a massive supercontinent and even fully functional plate tectonics that will separate continents or bring them together and build mountains and mountain ranges? How about flowing rivers, erosion simulation and more?

adding mushrooms would be an amazing development because it would give you another kingdom of life to build on

I can see this becoming something big.

This is awesome. I'd like to see two things: Map changing overtime. Neurons in animals.

I like this game a lot. It's very interesting to see ecosystems evolve.

It would make an interesting voice over, personally love to see how changes could happen over a two week period

You should add hyper-social insects like ants, termites, etc. I feel like it's a very good idea!

Reminds me a lot of Serina: a natural history of birds, very cool will be keeping an eye on this.

THIS GAME DESERVES MORE ATTENTION

You've earned my sub. That voice over person timber differs from Sir David Attenborough's, mainly in his pitch, which is higher than the original. I hope he can compensate for it and deepen his impression a bit.

i would love to see some water animals and plants, it just siting there untamed, maybe it could have some semi wings to fly and swim at the same time

This game looks like its right up my alley, I love evolution games ! And as an aspiring game dev, I'm learning a few things from your dev logs.

I would try to make it easier to evolve predation, as every time ive seen this program run, every organism stays herbivorous, and any attempts to forge a carnivore always result in the carnivore going extinct Maybe you could have something like in the real world, where if an herbivorous organism encounters a body of something, it will eat it (as the corpse is loaded with free nutrients the herbivore would have trouble getting lots of)

adding texture and stiffness to plants might also be a good idea

also adding mushrooms would give you true decomposers which is very important in real life😊

There's something unbelievably exciting about the idea of just watching genuine, organic evolution like this. Imagine being able to sculpt the geography and core initial environment and then have a large pool of random events (disease, asteroid impacts, gamma ray bursts....) and then see what emerges and how the various species adapt. I can see this little genre becoming staggeringly deep. I can even see games like this being genuinely useful for simulating the kind of species that could exist in certain alien environments. Tbh, my own excitement is causing me to have a minor existential crisis over the simulation hypothesis lol

next up "I let evolution sim run for 1 year until a species developed intelligence, now they are worshipping me"

This is the first video I’ve seen of yours and your simulation looks honestly amazing! I have some ideas that could be neat, (if these are already features, sorry) allowing the plants to evolve to have different pigments so animals with the “if you see the color green, go towards it” are less likely to eat them and having animals be able to evolve a mouth like a camel so the animal would take less damage from the spikes.

Goddam this is so cool i really hope you try to add physical effects like temp change that could cause major speciation. or maybe a plant efficiency change i really love this! this is probably the most perfect way to advertise the sapling its like species alre but better!

this game is going to be epic when it is finished, l loved spore and this will be even better than it

adding plants that spread there jeans with spores might be interesting and add another level to the game but might not be as visually appealing as fruits

Between this game and Thrive, I love to see the dream of Spore still lives on

This game looks excellent! I'm am very excited to see it evolve... :D

Spore 2.0 .I honestly had my childhood flashback seeing this reminded me so much of spore.I like how this focuses on this stage with the creatures and plant life instead rushing to conquer space 🙃

It would be cool to maybe see extinction events alot of intesting adaptations could happen with that

After binging all of these videos, I'm happy to say I'm a subscriber, and will be buying this game as soon as I possibly can.

Personally this is amazing. I just started watching you today and instantly liked everything about this game. For the next update suggestion, I think you should have the evolution make the plants very small. Kinda like grass. Instead of having just sand or dirt as the ground. 10/10

This makes me really happy because games like this feel like they have such an opportunity to grow and evolve haha (no pun intended) like say "The Sapling 2" would be even better graphics and evolution and stuff its just awesome

This deserves so much more attention

This is what Spore should have been.

Does the game have a "headless" mode? So I could run it somewhere without graphics and just make save copies every so often to look at?

I've been hoping for a SimLife-meets-Spore game for years. Sold!

maybe as a setting or just by default the ground being green would make the game look better in my opinion

this looks so interesting! :D i feel like a really interesting idea would be to introduce varying types of soil, like wet marshes, deserty sands, rocky dry areas, etc. to encourage more extreme variations in plantlife aha i love to see how environments grow due to their forced circumstances im so excited to see what comes out of this game this is such a cool concept

So I would love to see this in a school, teach kids about basic biology then run this program on it's own and let the kids analyze it and see why they think each thing grew. It would really develop their critical thinking skills. Does it tell you what they develop or do you observe and infer? Honestly this just screams superb education tool.

Great stuff. These are the programs I enjoy the most. I bought "The Sapling" to support your endeavors and wish you all the best in luck and prosperity. Excellent job!

This gme is fascinating! Hope the animations wil get polished in the future and this will boom :D

Absolutely phenomenal!!!! It reminds me so much of my favorite game, spore!! I truly hope this continues to develop and just know I'm going to be supporting this project from this point on!!

The potential for this game is enormous. In my opinion its still needs some visual polish so that the creatures don't look as stiff. But besides that it has so much potential to become something that spore could have been. Also would recommed a creature/plant creator that dosent relate to the main two game modes. Also another recommendation is to make the player start off in the water to be both the starting stage/ tutorial. Either way keep up the amazing work!!!

Amazing, just downloaded this off of steam :)

I LOVE that evolution games are becoming more popular! Fell in love with this niche genre after playing the old Sim games like Sim Life and Sim Earth.

I ran the worm evolution screensaver for ages, I'm gonna have great fun leaving these guys go in the background

Does The Sapling incorporate crossbreeding and polyploidization by some specific rules? If so, does it favour xbreeding between plants of the same chromosome count? Does it generate and keep the genetic family tree? It would be really interesting to see a huge multiplayer world where you upload your plants and fight for resources in the environment. I'd like to see the project get complex, like different nutrients, hardiness zones or weather cycles. Also, if you would figure out how to incorporate mutations not by generation, but growth cycles, it would be more realistic. Also, an interesting fact is, plants of different genus can perform genetic transfer once grafted on each other, and it happens naturally at times, gor example, when a branch of one tree gets overgrown by the log of an another one. There definitely is some room for experimentation, as you could add a function for shuffling and or dupling genes between two colliding plants - especially those activated most of the times.

This is so incredible! Evolution itself is such a simple idea but it allows for such complicated things, and the fact that you've accounted for a lot of them is super cool. Like the instinct to go towards anything green, it evolved simply because it was the most helpful, and you say that most players put it on their sandbox herbivores. Either way, this is a really damn awesome project, I wish you good luck with the development!

This game has been wish listed on steam! I'm so exited to play it!

Gaaf! Hier ga ik tzt eens even lekker mee spelen!

Holy shit, I've had this exact idea for making this game for years now. The only thing that held me back was my lack of knowledge in digital game design, so far I've only designed tabletop games. And now that I've decided a month ago to start to learn to program, another Dutchy has gone and build one of my ideas... Ah well, good for you I guess, I just had to be faster to make my own.

I would definitely love to see more neuron evolution type stuff, reminds me of something like this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N3tRFayqVtk.html&t But the environment changing overtime depending on settings you create for seasons or such would be really neat!

Since I was a child I dreamed with a game like this. I played Spore for years, but it always felt incomplete and it was really sad that they ditched so many concepts from their betas. This seems really promising, I wish you the best of lucks.

Awesome project. Haven't played it yet but gonna buy it latest at the next update. Here some thoughts you likely already had, and are obviously years in the future if at all possible. In the long run it could be awesome to add epigenetics to the game, where animals can adapt better to specific states of the environment. Or maybe seasons that make the world a little more dynamic and flexible. Are sexes in the game? An option for 2 or more specialised variations (like some ant collonies have) would be cool, or the option for transforming sex over the lifespan. Speaking of: insect swarms could be interesting. Also "swarms of plants" which could be used to add ground coverings like grass, or mushroom networks. And would be easyer to program as one larger entitiy, that just changes the color and texture of the floor. Or viruses/bacteria/parasites could be cool as you could just add them as a "stat" to the animals and plants, that. E.g. slightly modifies their color but are invisible. Also speaking of sex changes, fish and amphibia would be obviously really cool. Or communication between animals. Obviously the calculations for that would become difficult at some point. But some of these things could just be added in a very barebones way that still adds some more interacting systems and dimensions to the game. (E.g. wildfire/environmental catastrophies/global warming/iceages...)

Shared this video in 5 discord servers, I hope this game gets the attention it deserves ❤️

Ok i just found this and its amazing i need this game id love to try it out! Tho maybe you should lean on the simulating ecosystems maybe having some extremes like extreme cold areas or changes that could cause mass exticntions if major changes. That would be really cool to see alongside. a future series of these kinds of vids it seems from your views these types are the most viewed so maybe its good advertising?

OMG This looks like an INCREDIBLY FUN SIM TO PLAY. I would lose a whole year playing this.Everything else I would have to schedule around setting this up and watching it. I wouldn't want to miss the 1st appearance of a new evolved life form!

last time i saw u were making a plant only evolution sim but now we got animals which can form either symbiotic relationships with flowering plants or predatory and ammenalistic relationships with spiked leafy plants?? this is amazing!

yo this is pretty sick, always thought a game like this would be cool to see

This looks like something I could play for hours

I had no idea about this project until today. I don't know a lot of things, but regarding the plants perhaps wind speed and storms could influence leaf types and diversity. Taller trees generally have narrower leaves or leaves with a lot of air space to mitigate the damage from higher wind speeds, while shorter plants often have broader, flatter and darker leaves because wind is less of an issue and the dark leaves helps them compete.

The day someone creates a true evolution simulation is the day the Matrix is born. Keep up the good word Sir.

I remember playing this game forever ago. It was 2020 when I played. It was fun. I'm really glad to see it still in action. I'll need to play again.

Oh hey, I forgot this game existed. Notifications are based

I really like these 1 week straight simulations, please make more!

It's an amazing project for solo dev to do.I would like to see you adding more types of basic stuff for the game,something like Gymnosperm plants or poisionus that would make the game much more diversive to play.

this is actually amazing.

Id be extremely interested in how you did animations for the game Im a junior 3D artist and Im very interested in animation systems that are "universal" between different models. Edit: just saw you have a video on it, nvm. Awesome job dude. Im buying this

I think I now know what game I want for christmas

I got the game but the camera doesn't work like this it's just stuck looking forward and I cant choose where to place things, help

The spikes for plants seem a little OP maybe you should make it slightly easier for animals to eat them, however with a damage penalty that can be negated with better teeth (or tusks).

This actually looks really cool I'm so glad I found this! I'm going to buy it as soon as I get the chance!

Spore but done wright I love it

Man this is awesome! Im sure you could find some investors to help you grow and develop this quicker if you wanted. Spore spiritually successor!!!

Wow IT Look amazing i'm will give you a sub. Also you maybe should do better terrain graphic and add some textures to AI.

I think it would be cool to do these week long simulations every update also maybe some more scenarios for fun!

I know you have 8k subs now, B U T, subbing just to make sure you do/did the voice over thing, that's some good shit I could watch for hours my dude.

Now, send them the revelation.

I let mine run for a bit and animals managed to evolve nectar mouthes and to from flowers, I was hoping an animal would evolve arms and eventually wings but I think that’s very rare

I love these types of games, mainly just watching them grow on their own and see what happens, and with only watching 2 minutes of this video I am already very tempted to buy this. I Love you creators who for create such games for us simpletons to enjoy =)

Nice! Definably proves that God exists and is our Beloved Creator :D

I love this kind of stuff (and game :P) just purchased it on Steam :)

This is super interesting! I love how the animals adapt similar to real life creatures. It will be interesting when flight is a bit more reliable to see if creatures can adapt against the spikes, similar to cactus dwelling birds

I support you mate keep up the great work this project is amazing!

Now THIS is the evolution game I’ve been looking for all my life! Definitely gonna be looking at getting it!

Hi! Will you mãe e olvable inteligence? Like some animal that can use some tool for atack, or some animal whith the ability to make burrows or rock piles to live in? And, does the game have a energy system, If not do you think of adding it? Like, eyes would need more energy, runing fast too, maybe whith, that, creatures with a Very fast metabolism coud evolve, eating a Lot and being Very fast.

another suggestion spikes should only protect certain areas this way they are more balanced they can even be a one time only use

This is awesome. Seems like a nice alternative to Spore or Species: ALRE.

This game is so beautiful.

I just bought the game and I am enjoying it. Is there a way to see a family tree of each species? Is there a way to raise or lowers to mutation rate? I would love to lower it to about a tenth of what it currently and track to evolution over 1000s of years.

I got the game but it sems that its a limit to how many animals it can be in a world if it is can u plz remove it it wuld make plants rarer and more presure for predators to evolve

This game is all I ever wanted ever since the child-me read an article about Spore being in development.

This one random video from my recommendation list was all it took for me to pop over to Steam and get the game. I love it!

Just found this channel today. :D I think this game looks so interesting! i hope there will come more updates in the future :D

Those hands didn't turn out to be very handy after all. Yuk yuk yuk!~

just got this recommended to me and i'm already loving it, im going to buy the sapling when i get the chance its spore creature phase without the annoying survival aspect

At first I thought “this is just spore” but after finishing the video it’s clear there’s a lot more here then that