A simulation/strategy game about population genetics. Breed your animals and evolve your own species, based on real genetics.
The Swiss indie studio Team Niche reached its $15’000 goal for Niche – a genetics survival game on Kickstarter within the first three days and is still going strong with over $30’000 and more than a thousand backers halfway through thanks to its vibrant community.
Niche is a game about creative problem solving that lets players evolve their own creatures. The main objective is to keep your animal tribe alive against all odds, such as hungry predators, climate change and sickness. Players can come up with tons of different approaches to survive in the harsh environment. How about evolving overwhelming strength for battle? Great camouflage for disguise? Or a skin that is toxic to eat for predators?
The game’s mating system is based on real gene science, featuring mutation, dominant/recessive/codominant heredity and much more because Niche’s game designer is a huge biology nerd. Niche even has a system to simulate incest between animals.
Niche will be released for PC, Mac and Linux in Q1 2017. An Early Access version of Niche will be released on Steam in July 2016. The game is also planned to be ported to tablets.
About Niche – a genetics survival
Niche is a mixed genre game about the scientific topic of population genetics. Shape your animal tribe and find an ecological niche for it to life in! The main goal is to keep your tribe alive against all odds, such as hungry predators, climate change and spreading sickness. Resource-management and smart breeding based on real genetics are the main mechanics of Niche. The worlds and animals are procedurally generated. Niche is played from a top-down perspective, giving the player a god-like view over the board. Play-rounds are represented by a day-cycle. All animals of the tribe can be moved and used to perform actions (collecting food, scouting a new field, mating, attacking a predator, etc). Animals have a limited lifespan which means offspring is needed in order to prevent extinction. An animals characteristics are defined by its genes which can be passed on to the next generation. Countless new genes can be found, unlocked, mutated and combined. The game world consists of multiple islands. In oder to beat the game, the players’ tribe has to inhabit all islands which proves that a successful approach to survival has been found and an adaptive species has been created.