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.
Patch v13.40
This is the first time the new movement update is available to everyone, regardless of whether you chose the beta. A quick overview of all new features:\n\n\n\nThis is what has changed since the movement update patch last week.\n\n
Fixes for juveniles and the red torso length handle in the animal editor
\n\n- \n
- When changing posture of adults, and juveniles have the same posture, also change it for the juvenile... fixes unexpected behavior and ALSO prevents crashes related to accessories on top (thanks, Shemariguess, al!)\n
- For juveniles, have the handle at the correct position also when the posture is different from the adult form\n
- Fixed handle initially not responding when looking at the juvenile form of an animal\n
- Made sure the handle is at the correct position when entering the editor\n
Various fixes for volcanoes
\n\n- \n
- Fixed not being able to highlight a volcano directly after creating it\n
- Moving a volcano now also moves the hole (thanks TaterTot, Mike the Drawman!)\n
- Fixed problem with hability calculations that caused volcanoes to be linked to existing landmass indices (thanks TaterTot!)\n
- Volcanoes that were removed by the player can no longer erupt (thanks TaterTot!)\n
- Volcanoes no longer remain highlighted after you selected which one should erupt\n
Fixed various unlocking mechanics
\n\n- \n
- In the plant editor during the scenarios, the correct plant traits are unlocked also when mutating a plant two times in a row (thanks TaterTot!)\n
- Sandbox mode now requires finishing the first scenario again\n
- You can no longer click and play scenarios that are not unlocked yet (thanks VoidHydra!)\n
- The \'cool completionist\' achievement is now only awarded when all scenarios are actually beaten (thanks VoidHydra!)\n
- Fixed the \'Courageous Carnivore\' achievement never firing (thanks al!)\n
Fixes for the sandbox
\n\n- \n
- Disaster panel: moisture button no longer influences ocean moisture level\n
- When randomly generating a planet, gravity is now also randomized instead of always being super strong (thanks TaterTot!)\n
Misc
\n\n- \n
- Made sleeping and giving birth animations slightly less weird for upright animals (thanks Parrokeet!)\n
I often forget to read comments below release notes, so if you have questions, suggestions or bug reports, feel free to reach out via the Steam forums or thesaplinggame@gmail.com.
[ 2026-01-10 07:21:54 CET ] [Original Post]
Minimum 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.
- Storage: 150 MB available space
Recommended Setup
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