Over the last few weeks, a new devlog series was released on the The Sapling Youtube channel, showcasing the upcoming 'Sea & Sandbox' update. It will include, among many other things, a planet editor, a season editor, algae and underwater animals. The first video of the devlog series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3iQw2WYvwE
The last and most popular video of the devlog series:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psqkZBXaitk
This new 'Sea & Sandbox' will be available for everybody on September 13. If you don't mind glitches and crashes, you will also be able to play experimental builds from August 16 onwards by opting into the beta in your Steam settings. The end of every devlog video shows you how to do that.
Furthermore, a heads-up: most players indicate the current price of the game is a bit on the cheap side, so September 13 will also see a $2 price increase... so if you already know you want to buy the game, you might want to do it now.
The Sapling is a short simulation game where you design your own plants and animals, and put them in a world together. Or you turn on random mutations, and see what evolution does to your ecosystem!
Features
Design plants and animals.
Fast-forward time to and watch the ecosystem work like a charm or slowly fall apart (probably the latter :) ).
A sandbox mode where you can skip time and turn on random mutation, allowing true evolution.
An instinct system where you can specify what an animal should do when it hears or sees something.
A procedural animation system so any animal can perform any animation.
Procedural music mixed on the fly.
Everything set up to be easily extended by players.
This looks just like Spore!
Wessel Stoop has wanted to play a simulation game where you can build your own plants and animals, put them in a world, and see what happens since 2002. You can imagine his excitement when Will Wright, the father of simulation games, demoed his latest game Spore to an enthusiastic crowd. When Spore turned out to be all game genres except simulation, Wessel decided he wanted to try to make the game by himself. The Sapling is the result of that attempt.
MINIMAL SETUP
OS: Ubuntu 16 or newer
Processor: A processor with SSE2 instruction set supportMemory: 4 GB RAM
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: Graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities.