Overview

As the acting flora and fauna specialist aboard a colony spaceship, it is your job to populate the soon to be colonized planet with life. Derive new species from existing species by adding or removing traits or modifying their body sizes. The captain will be awoken when the spaceship reaches the planet, so be sure to impress him with the variety of species you print!

Controls

Controls are mouse only. Pressing escape will close menus and will bring up the settings menu.

Gameplay

When the game starts, one base plant species exists. Each day the player can choose to derive an additional species by 1) adding a trait to an existing species, 2) removing a trait from an existing species, or 3) increasing or decreasing the size (small, medium, large) of an existing species. If there are no existing species of a category (plant, herbivore, or carnivore), the player has the option to add a base version of that category as a starting point for new traits or size changes in subsequent days. The player does not need to derive a new species and may just progress to the next day.

When the next day button is pressed, each individual in each species has a chance to reproduce, attempts to hunt for its food (plants don't need food, herbivores eat plants, and carnivores eat animals), and dies if it starves or gets eaten. The traits each plant or animal has affect its reproduction rate and hunt success by, for example, giving it more speed or defense.

Track the species' progress by observing their population over time. The graphs view allows the player to view data over time for all species, all plants, all herbivores, all carnivores, or specific species if selected. The player can select to view population over time or reason for death over time (old age, starvation, or hunted). Strive to balance plant vs herbivore vs carnivore species.

At the end of fifty days, the player's progress will be scored and sent to a leaderboard. The player is rated on total population of living plants and animals, number of species, variety of body sizes, and variety of traits used.

About

Mix and Match was developed in a week for Godot Wild Jam 82 with the theme Unseen and the wildcard Immersive.

I used the VeraMono font, sound effects from Kenney's UI Audio pack, and SilentWolf for leaderboard support. All other assets were created by me for this game jam. No generative AI was used.

Known issues that will be addressed after the game jam is done:
- The font looks blurry on 1080p monitors and is crisper on 4k monitors