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The Sapling
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!
What players say
Steam review score and the most-helpful voices, which may include critical ones. Score via Steam as of 2026-09-02 · quoted reviews as of 2026-05-13.
What reviewers agree on
53 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“fun if you like evolution”
“great game and the owner listens to the community. i hope he keeps working on this game long term”
“pretty fun game, but prone to crashes”
4 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“It is very enjoyable if you're a person interested in evolution and biology...speaking about the game itself, it's very wide so to speak, as there's a lot of options of what to do every time you play (scenarios, daily…”
3 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“I'll edit this review if my opinion changes in the future, but the game has been in development since 2019 and I'm a bit surprised by how unpolished it remains. Of course, huge kudos to the dev for continuing to work on…”
“great game and the owner listens to the community. i hope he keeps working on this game long term”
3 of the 98 reviews raise this.
“perfect evolution sim f0r my fellow nerds, animations and game mechanics are PERFECT ,”
15 of the 98 reviews raise this · 12 of them still recommend the game.
“I'll edit this review if my opinion changes in the future, but the game has been in development since 2019 and I'm a bit surprised by how unpolished it remains. Of course, huge kudos to the dev for continuing to work on…”
“The game is genuinely less functional and significantly more janky now than it was 1 year ago.”
“pretty fun game, but prone to crashes”
13 of the 98 reviews raise this · 11 of them still recommend the game.
“Very Short Game with simple scenarios that can be won with basic knowledge and rarely trial and error. However the game is very unoptimized even on the lowest settings and whilst limiting the amount of species, this…”
“its a very fun game but the game crashes and gets very laggy even with a beefy pc, the game almost always crashes, desiging the creatures is fun but they tend to end up looking the same on every run unless you force…”
“the game is good but crashes quite a bit as well as stuttering, though it's a very ambitious game so i can't blame it for doing that oh also i wish animals could mutate instincts but i assume that's been asked for…”
13 of the 98 reviews raise this · 6 of them still recommend the game.
“I think in 3-5 years this will be my favorite game. In it's current state, I put about 50 hours into it trying to force it to be something it isn't yet. (Including letting it run for about a day by itself). Currently…”
“The game is genuinely less functional and significantly more janky now than it was 1 year ago.”
“Very Short Game with simple scenarios that can be won with basic knowledge and rarely trial and error. However the game is very unoptimized even on the lowest settings and whilst limiting the amount of species, this…”
8 of the 98 reviews raise this · 3 of them still recommend the game.
“I'll edit this review if my opinion changes in the future, but the game has been in development since 2019 and I'm a bit surprised by how unpolished it remains. Of course, huge kudos to the dev for continuing to work on…”
“I think in 3-5 years this will be my favorite game. In it's current state, I put about 50 hours into it trying to force it to be something it isn't yet. (Including letting it run for about a day by itself). Currently…”
“Clear as mud. I've tried to get into this game multiple times and have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing by scenario 2. Googled it, searched the forums, searched the guides, searched Youtube, and none of the advice,…”
3 of the 98 reviews raise this · 2 of them still recommend the game.
“buggy but i have faith in this developer, also dev mabye please fix the camera perhaps, its kind of buggy. Please let me name saves and exit the sandbox creator.”
“the editor is so annoying, i understand how it works but its so janky and glitchy”
Counted across 98 English reviews, sampled to match this game's 89.2% positive rating · as of 2026-05-13
“This game is pretty interesting and has a ton of potential—imagine Spore, but done with way more care and zero publisher meddling that crippled the original. In The Sapling, you actually get to build a whole planet: plants, animals for land, sea, and air. You can skip time,…”
— a player, Steam review · 37 hrs played“Short but honest review: It's not only a promising successor to Spore (2008) but it genuinely has GREATER potential. Don't let my first words diminish the fact that it has now established itself as its own amazing evolution game with its own fresh mechanics even in Early Access.…”
— a player, Steam review · 7 hrs played“i love the game but its quite laggy i would recomend a mid to high end becouse im running it on a laptop over all a good game recomend”
— a player, Steam review · 6 hrs playedPlayer activity
Monthly average concurrent players. Live data self-collected from the Steam API · history through 2026-06 via SteamCharts.
Achievement stats
Global completion rates across all Steam players — a data view of how far people actually get. Source: Steam official stats · as of 2026-09-05.
Price tracking
US-region pricing (USD), sampled twice daily by our own tracker since 2026-07-11. Steam prices vary by region — always confirm your local price on Steam.
Regional prices at last sample, in local currency — Steam sets each region's price independently.
Cheapest → most expensive, converted to USD at ECB reference rates (2026-09-04). Relative comparison only.
Latest official news
Developer announcements via the Steam news API — links go to the original posts. More across all games on the news hub.
The stream is almost halfway! Watch together with the dev in 2 hours
As 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
Wright-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 evol
Patch v13.71
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 pat
Patch v13.57
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-vi
Patch v13.52
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 I
Games like The Sapling
From our knowledge graph — ranked by shared traits, not a black box. Each card says why it's here.
Universe Sandbox
96.7% · 22,242 reviews
shares God Game, Science, Education, Sandbox
SpaceEngine
96.0% · 9,300 reviews
shares Science, Education, Procedural Generation, Sandbox
Ecosystem
78.0% · 501 reviews
shares God Game, Science, Artificial Intelligence, Life Sim
Solar 2
90.4% · 1,597 reviews
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Cell to Singularity - Evolution Never Ends
86.1% · 10,734 reviews
shares Dinosaurs, God Game, Science, Education
Prehistoric Kingdom
90.0% · 3,839 reviews
shares Dinosaurs, God Game, Science, Education
Townscaper
95.7% · 11,258 reviews
shares Short, Nature, Procedural Generation, Sandbox
Cloud Gardens
94.9% · 1,453 reviews
shares Short, Nature, Procedural Generation, Sandbox
Screenshots
Official Steam store screenshots — click any shot to enlarge.
Facts & details
From the Steam store record, snapshot 2026-05-12.
| Genres | Simulation, Early Access |
| Player tags | Life Sim · Sandbox · Science · God Game · Nature · Artificial Intelligence · Procedural Generation · Simulation · Dinosaurs · Aliens · Education · Relaxing (SteamSpy community voting) |
| Features | Single-player · Steam Achievements · Steam Cloud · Family Sharing |
| Languages | English |
| Achievements | 5 |
| Official site | http://thesaplinggame.com |
Minimum system requirements (PC)
Minimum: OS *: Windows 7 Processor: A processor with SSE2 instruction set support Memory: 8 GB RAM Graphics: Graphics card with DX10 (shader model 4.0) capabilities. DirectX: Version 10 Storage: 150 MB available space