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The SaplingNewsPatch v13.71
Game update

Patch v13.71

The Sapling · published 16 May 2026, 12:05 UTC · build 23265879

All newsPlayers around this dateRead on Steam

Balancing and fixes for animals

  • Various legs besides the body now have special requirements for the animal to have more than 1 set of limbs, to make them look more natural (already in the previous patch logs, but now it's working)
  • Sessile animals with moving juveniles now actually move to the ocean floor and stop moving as adults (thanks, Cody Beaver, Cringus Ringus, Spectator, Acarlis, mic biology!)
  • Idem for ocean floor walkers (thanks, Ancient Relic!)
  • Optimized species population size tracker in situations with many species

Balancing and fixes for plants

  • Grass is now removed from a cell when eaten (thanks, esportfrank!)
  • Wildfire now removes grass, and grass won't be able to grow there for a while
  • Plant subspecies will now always have the same color as their parent species, to make it easier to identify which plant is which species
  • Tweaked the chance of algae evolving into plants

Working on the weight system

  • Made max weights for flying and in particular gliding higher, so development of flight is more likely
  • Weight now increases with body size, making giant flying things less likely (thanks, Warlor-vir!)
  • Individual torso segments now have less influence on the final weight to compensate for the above
  • Now the 'halve weight' icons are used everywhere, so you can see the weight in more detail
  • Removed ugly floating points that could sometimes pop oup in the UI

Introduced savefile format 16

  • Memory/savefile optimization: the game now prunes extinct subspecies that the player couldn't see anyway
  • Added support for automatic continental drift
  • When loading, fixed the explainer text about which formats are supported

Various little editor fixes

  • Adding seasons and then hitting 'randomize all' no longer messes up the planet tilt (thanks, SethMMX!)
  • Plus and minus keys now also control zoom in the alga and fungus editors (thanks, Daruka!)
  • When dragging the 'slow moving tube feet' and 'sessile foot' body parts, they now have the correct color instead of white

Misc

  • Clicking a species in the cladogram view now shows a subtree starting from that species, making it easy to study part of very large trees

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 [email protected].

More from The Sapling

Other announcements

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Esports30 Jun 2026The stream is almost halfway! Watch together with the dev in 2 hoursAs you might know, at the moment I'm running a long livestream, simulating evolution 24/7. It's all epxplained in this video: We've been able to follow the planet Wright-2b for almost a week now, and the moving continent (named 'Rupert' by the community) is about halfway its journey. Many interesting things are happening, like: · The two main continents are each hosting their own plant family:…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:Game update7 Apr 2026Patch v13.57Balancing 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…