Multicellular Stage

Stage Details
Gameplay Type	2D (early), 3D (late)
Previous Stage	Microbe Stage
Next Stage	Aware Stage
Editors	Body Plan Editor, Cell Editor
Internal Name	multicellular_stage

Concept for the multicelullar editor by Uniow

In the Multicellular Stage, your colony will become more complex and specialized, as well as experiencing a transition into a 3D environment, until it becomes a macroscopic multicellular organism. The stage ends when your creature first develops a certain level of sentience.

Overview

Life in the oceans flourishes. There will be a lot of diversity. The world has suddenly gotten a lot bigger for the player.

The player will now control a colony of cells that form a larger organism. The scale will gradually increase in size.

Transitions

The stage starts when cells bind together through use of Binding Agents (Adhesion Proteins) and the cells can no longer unbind (they become actually a single organism). The move to multicellular requires a large enough cell colony to exist as a precondition.

It ends when the player's species evolves a nervous system.

Features

The gameplay of the first segment of the stage will feel a lot like the Microbe Stage. Gameplay will continue on the 2D plane with other cells, but the difference will be that the player will now control a growing colony. The difference from the end of microbe stage is that the colony can no longer be disbanded, instead it acts like a permanently stuck together, singular organism. This is the early part of the multicellular where the microbe environment is still used and the player can interact with microbes.

In the editor, the player can now create and edit cell types in addition to making changes to the structure and organelles of those cells. Any change made to one cell of a cell type in the colony will automatically apply to all other cells of that type. Using different cell types the player will be able to specialize different cells in his colony towards different functions, giving them a big advantage over unicellular organisms.

In the later part of multicellular stage, the player becomes a macroscopic creature. This shifts the game's scale so that microbes are no longer visible and the player moves onto sculpting tissues instead of placing individual cells.

There is a separate page for the Multicellular Stage GDD describing the stage mechanics in more details.

UI

Nothing has been discussed.

Concept Art

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  Perception concept

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  Editor concept

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  Terrain color concept

Current Development

Prototype level of the development of the multicellular stage has started. Early multicellular is mostly playable. Later multicellular stage is more experimental prototype.