Open worlds that never run out of room
2026-06-13- Each shared open world now holds up to 500 species. When every open world is full, a brand-new one appears automatically, with its own randomly generated conditions and founding species, so there is always somewhere to evolve.
- The homepage now spotlights the four newest open worlds.
Living worlds: species now shape each other
2026-06-13- Creatures no longer evolve in isolation. When you evolve a species, it now adapts to the real neighbours that share its part of the world: the predators that could eat it, the prey it can eat, and the rivals competing for the same food, named in its reasoning.
- Every species now has a diet type (producer, herbivore, carnivore, decomposer, or generalist) and a zone (where it lives), chosen when you create a founder. Together they decide who counts as a neighbour.
- Add a predator to a world and the grazers you evolve afterwards start growing defences against it; diverge a lineage into a hunter and its cousins may arm themselves. The food web builds itself from your choices.
- Two new articles explain it: how your creatures evolve against their neighbours, and the diet types and zones behind a food web.
Body plans showcase and more reading
2026-06-13- A new Body plans page: for each of the 17 body plans, the deepest, healthiest living species evolved so far, with a link straight to it.
- Four new blog articles: a tour of xenobiology, why evolution never gives free upgrades, a field guide to the body plans, and why lineages hit a dead end.
Fairer limits, clearer counts
2026-06-12- Daily evolution limits now depend on where you build: in the open worlds it's 5 a day signed-out and 10 signed-in; in your own worlds it's 40 a day.
- The evolve panel shows how many you have left today, counting down as you go.
- Run out of free evolutions while signed out? A quick sign-up appears right there so you can keep going, and you land back where you left off.
- The AI "suggest a world / species" helpers now need an account and share a friendly 5-a-day budget.
- Each species now shows its body plan as a tag, so you can tell what it is at a glance even with a custom icon.
Custom icons for your worlds and species
2026-06-12- When you create a world, pick a custom icon for it: the icon updates live from your conditions, and a pen button opens a palette to choose your own (or keep it automatic).
- Give a starting species its own icon too, in both the create-world form and when adding a species. It defaults to the body plan, you can pick from a large creature palette, and it carries down to everything you evolve from it.
- A new frozen open world to explore: Verglas, a sunless ocean moon under a thick ice shell.
- AI-suggested worlds are far more varied now (no more lookalikes), and two creatures in the same world can never share a name.
- Signing in when you are already signed in now takes you to your account instead of the login form.
Tidy up your own worlds
2026-06-12- In a personal world you own, delete a starting species: a small bin icon on the founding species in the tree removes it and its entire lineage, after a clear warning.
- Creating a world now prompts you to sign in first, then drops you right back on the form, instead of letting you fill in a world you cannot save.
- The evolved checkmark on a pressure now shows only for pressures you tried yourself, so others' experiments still look new to you.
- When creating a world, the body plan starts unset and "Suggest a species" proposes one of the body plan you have chosen.
A fresh look, with dark mode
2026-06-12- A full visual refresh: a new display typeface, a calmer field-guide palette, and more polished cards, worlds, and species pages.
- Dark mode, with a toggle in the header that remembers your choice.
- A redesigned homepage: live stats, a quick how-it-works, the open worlds to jump into, and the deepest lineage so far shown as a tree.
- Better keyboard and screen-reader support throughout, plus a colour-coded pressure picker.
Profiles, sharing, and a blog
2026-06-12- Every account gets a public profile at /u/your-username, showing your worlds and stats. Share it from your account page.
- Share buttons on creatures and worlds, with rich preview cards when you drop a link in Reddit or Discord.
- Shorter, readable links for worlds and species (old links still work).
- A new blog explaining what SpecEvo and speculative evolution are, plus privacy, terms, and contact pages.
Extinction & lineage viability
2026-06-11- Every lineage now has a viability meter — push it too hard and it can go extinct, ending that branch.
- Over-specialising (hammering the same pressure), piling up trade-offs, or whiplashing between opposing pressures all add strain; a fragile lineage shows a ⚠️ warning before a likely-fatal pressure.
- Relief pressures — 🌾 Abundance and 🏞️ New frontier — restore viability, so diversifying keeps a lineage healthy.
- Extinct tips can't be evolved further, but the lineage above them is untouched — branch from a healthier ancestor to continue.
- Cards, the in-world panel and the tree show a health bar (resilient / strained / fragile) and a 💀 on extinct species.
More worlds & easier exploring
2026-06-11- Three open worlds to evolve in now — Tethys Shallows, The Ashfall Basin (volcanic) and The Sunscoured Flats (desert) — each with a full set of starting species.
- The Worlds page is now tabbed: Open worlds, User-created, and My worlds.
- The tree of life gained zoom in/out buttons and a Reset view button.
- AI "suggest a world" and "suggest a species" are more varied and less repetitive.
Accounts, usernames & your own worlds
2026-06-10- Sign in with a magic link (no password) and pick a username — you show up as @you on everything you create.
- Worlds now have owners: create up to 5 personal worlds only you can evolve in; everyone else can view but not touch them.
- Tethys Shallows is the shared open world anyone can evolve in (3 free evolutions without an account; 5/day once signed in).
- Copy any world's environment into your own to start a fresh tree; rename or delete the worlds you own.
- A "Your worlds" list, plus "created by @username" tags across worlds.
- Homepage now spotlights the Top-20 most-evolved species, with a link to all species.
In-world workspace
2026-06-10- World pages are now an interactive workspace — single-click a species in the lineage tree to select it and evolve or cross-breed it right there, without leaving the world.
- Double-click a node to open its full species page.
- Slimmed the in-world panel to name + “shaped by” + bio → pressures (full detail lives on the species page).
Cross-breeding (hybrids)
2026-06-10- Mate two diverged branches of the same lineage to produce a hybrid that blends both parents.
- Divergence matters: closely-related crosses are vigorous; distant or different-body-plan crosses come out unstable / likely sterile.
- Hybrids show a 🧬 badge and a dashed second-parent edge in the tree.
Worlds you can build
2026-06-10- Create your own world (star, gravity, chemistry, water, habitat) and a founding species.
- Add more starting species to any world; browse all worlds at /worlds.
- AI helpers: “Suggest a world” and “Suggest a species” fill plausible details from your conditions.
- A world’s conditions shape every evolution that happens in it.
More ways to evolve
2026-06-10- 21 environmental pressures across 4 categories (climate, resources, predators & life, habitat & extremes) — including disease, mate competition, perpetual darkness, toxic environments and more.
- 17 body-plan archetypes from fish and tetrapods to cephalopods, plants, fungi and microbes.
Browse & discover
2026-06-09- All-species page with search, body-plan filter, sortable tree / newest / most-voted, and collapsible branches.
- Readable URLs (/creature/silt-burrower-…), ancestry breadcrumbs, and a parent→child “what changed” diff.
- Each creature’s lineage view shows only its own tree.
Foundation
2026-06-09- Text-first creature cards (no AI art) + a branching, pan/zoom tree of life.
- One LLM call per evolution, validated and grounded in real evolutionary mechanisms with a required trade-off.
- Repeat evolutions are de-duplicated so the same pressure on the same creature never costs twice.
- Built on Next.js + Supabase with rate-limit and spend guardrails.
