Esports25 Jun 2026Wright-2b is live!Streaming evolution simulation indie game The Sapling, 24/7 for 2 weeks: We started on planet Wright-2b with a simple alga and underwater animal, turned on random mutations, and now we watch what evolves. Introduction to the project: Introduction to the world:
Balancing and fixes for plants · Major rebalancing of leaf statistics, so you will more variety in the leaves evolving · Bioluminescent flowers and fruits now cost slightly more energy (thanks, Warlord-vir!) · Prevented plants slowly taking over areas where they shouldn't be able to survive because of the moisture · Prevented another way to make illegal fruits, causing the game to glitch (thank…
Working on land animal evolution · Made the evolution of land animals more likely · Animals with aquatic eggs that can only walk very slowly are now considered land animals if they also swim very slowly · If there are only very few land species, subspecies branch off into their own species earlier · Visualization: only reuse a model for an existing species if the subspecies has the same limbs.…
More work on the project to make the game easier to understand · Added a habitat map for the plant and animal editors, so you can quickly see where in your world this planet will survive · Moved the 'this organism has a problem' message out of the editor side bar for editors, so it has more space for a more detailed explanation · For the plant editor, merged the energy usage and energy profit b…
A completely new cladogram view I've replaced the old cladogram view, because playtesting quite consistently showed that nobody was using it. The game is now using a completely new chronogram approach as can be seen in both Species ALRE and The Bibites. It should give a much better 'zoomed out' overview of which species branched off from which one at what point in time. Even though previous cha…
Major simulation change If an animal is in a location that contains food, it will no longer leave that location until all food is gone (except plankton, which requires swimming through). This makes it a lot easier to keep various animals alive, addressing a recurring complaint... but also leads to crowded environment (and, following that, possibly low FPS) more quickly. Thanks Luka159, Generald…
Overhauled optimization mechanism that decides which 3D models to show Building procedural 3D models on the fly is expensive; on most modern hardware, showing an accurate model for each plant and animal in realtime is not feasbile. Therefore, as an optimization mechanic, until now only populous species got their own models, which was an acceptable approximation for some time. However, ever sinc…
Completely overhauled how species are detected So far, species classification was based on the features of an organism. Simply put, if a plant evolved a new type of leaf, or an animal evolved a new type of fin, the game decided this was a new species, without giving it further thought. For longer simulations, this resulted in hundreds of thousands of species (99% of which only had 1 organism be…
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: This is what has changed since the movement update patch last week. Fixes for juveniles and the red torso length handle in the animal editor · When changing posture of adults, and juveniles have the same posture, also change it for the juvenile…
Improved upright bipeds · Added arm swing animation for animals with arms · Upright bipeds no longer have their feet clip through the ground when placed · Upright bipeds no longer slowly sink into the ground when walking · Prevented walking animation problems for creatures with limbs that do not walk, like fins or arms Other animation improvements · Revised walking animation parameters for the…
Resurrected the scenarios · Tested and rebalanced all scenarios to work with the new features of the movement update · Redesigned the soil statistic button to have a planet icon · Added new terrain overlay steepness stats and climate zones to all scenarios · For all scenarios, added new limbs to 'anchored body parts' (which don't require mutations to reach) wherever it made sense · Prevented pl…
Reintroduced the 'randomize all' button The new version of the button generates small and large landmasses at random, using the new continent system. They can be moved and changed by the player. Most of the other random changes (like temperature, moisture, rings, etc) could be reused from the previous iteration of this button, but they're now also linked to the climate zone system so you can qu…
More work on animation · Added sleeping animations: animals squatting, moving head down and to the side · Added egg laying animation (best visible in animals with a tail, because they move it up) · Optimized specializing animations to player designed animals, and made it possible for an animation to only affect the first limbs (instead of all of them) · Changed animation where tailless aquatic…
Introducing save file format 13 · Includes steepness of the terrain · Remembers manual mode in the soil statistics view · Updated the loading view explanation (which formats are supported) Working on flight with insect wings · Animals with insect wings no longer stop moving when flying at normal time speeds · Actually play the fluttery flight animation in the game · Added aerial idle animations…
Working on body part loading · Discovered that some limbs and accessories were saved incorrectly. This was hidden so far because the loading was ALSO incorrect, but will give problems in the future. From this patch onwards, some creatures saved with earlier versions of the game might load with other body parts than you remember. · Found a few situations where the assets were loaded multiple tim…
Simulation fixes · I think I finally figured out how to prevent sessile feet on the side. This bug caused numerous problems, like plants multiplying, corrupt saves and missing models in the species list view. Added steepness of the terrain and how limbs differ in what steepness they support · Also calculate the steepness underwater, as visible on the steepness map · Got the steepness map also w…
Simulation fixes · Prevented another way the sessile feet could evolve to be on the side. This bug causes numerous problems, like plants multiplying, corrupt saves and missing models in the species list view (thanks azul1462, TaterTot, MisterLiteralRandomGuy!) EDIT: hmm I just encountered this problem again, still not fully fixed · Fixed sessile animal babies moving around (thanks ultraneongodp…
Simulation fixes · Fixed aquatic animal babies being stuck in the ground (thanks Hexadexx, Enzo Ramos Henrique, Ultraneongodpet, Kingdragon2026, Col. Caboose, bashclark1004, azul1462!) · Fixed limbs mutating into sessile feet on the side, which the game cannot display (thanks AnniJPG!) · Sped up time skips by removing excessive logs Working on new limbs · Redesigned the limb stats view in the a…
For the brave, not scared of bugs and crashes, I just uploaded the first unstable build of the Movement update to the beta branch! New features A new terrain editor which works both in the planet editor but also during a simulation, allowing you to: · Draw your own continents · Delete continents · Modify continents · Move continents · Adjust calculated land statistics (like temperature and mois…
Apologies for the inconvenience everyone! I was stupid enough to release a patch that introduces a major bug right before the devlog period. As editing the devlog videos eats all of my time, and they have a deadline, I couldn't fix it before today. But the last video is uploaded now, so here you go :).
It all starts with new legs, like ones inspired by the kangaroo and insects, but the old walking system just couldn’t handle them. So I rebuilt the system from the ground up, with shorter iteration times and way more polish. Now animals can hop, climb steep terrain, and even walk with insect or reptile-style legs. But this is only the beginning: the real theme of the update is hidden in the fir…
Back in May, I asked a simple question: what happens if you place a few primitive organisms on a brand new planet, switch on random mutations, and let evolution run… for an entire month? To find out, I launched a 31-day Twitch livestream using The Sapling . Starting with just a basic alga and an aquatic animal, we watched as life on planet Wright-1b unfolded in real time. Every adaptation, ever…
As I've focused on the livestream and a new upcoming big update, it's been quite a while since I've released a patch of bugfixes. In the mean time, I have continued to process bug reports, though, and also made improvements to keep the livestream running. As the next batch of videos in September will undoubtedly bring a bunch of new (and returning) players, it's time this work gets released. Ap…
I'm streaming The Sapling, 24/7 for 1 month. We started on planet Wright-1b with a simple alga and underwater animal, turned on random mutations, and now we watch what evolves. See for details! Announcement video:
Balancing mutation mechanics for more interesting simulations · Made it possible for fungi to disperse via water · Made it more likely for new land animals to lose unused fins · Made the emergence of sexual reproduction more likely · Made the emergence of other sexes more likely · Made the evolution of land plants more likely on a planet with seasons · Meteorites block a way larger percentage o…
Save format version 11 · Storing fixed family relations · Storing fungi death causes Improvements for the animal mutation system · Greatly increased chances that land animals will emerge · Changed animal color mutation system to much smaller changes, but much more frequently (thanks BananasGoMoo!) · Cleaned up a lot of unused code for mutating animals at random, making it slightly more efficien…
Optimizations · Turned off a prebuilding system that once saved FPS, but since the new optimizations took more time figuring out which organisms to prebuild; should be make the daily lag spikes less intense · For instincts, the game now looking around an animal for trigger if the trigger is 'feeling', speeding up the simulation when there are a lot of animals with feel instincts Balancing · Mad…
Changes to the animal juvenile stage · The color of the juvenile stage of an animal is now always linked to the adult stage unless you actively change it (so no more accidental brown children) · If you add a bodypart in a place where the juvenile stage already has something, and you the remove that thing the juvenile stage has, the result will not be an empty space (thanks Connor McCreesh!) Fix…
Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.