My Suggestions

Hi Stray Fawn Studio,

I started playing Niche since version 1.0.2 and I have already spent multiple dozens of hours playing it. It would be nice if you would read my whole post, since I think it would possibly improve the gameplay a lot. Even though, after multiple hours playing it at once, I often yet need to take break because of some smaller comfort issues of the gameplay:

Collective Status Information Menus - What always bothered me in turn based strategy games is the fact that managing a large amount of units is kind of time expensive. Niche adds another type of complexity to it, since it isn't always clear which stats your nicheling has just by looking at it. I think a menu which lists all of your creatures with adjustable filters could remedy this. For example, if I want to know which males and females I have, I can simply activate the filter for gender types and get a list of those I want. The same goes for all other stats: strength of 5 or higher, immunity to poison, rams in their genes etc. But also a combination of multiple filters like: male, immunity genes without A and F, double rams and double claws in genes.

Detailed Information Book - A small guideline to make all game mechanics clear since there is already a decent amount to keep mind of.

I think I would separate this into two parts:

[*]The Value Table

[*]The Game Mechanics Guide

The Value Table could be accessed throughout the specific stats menu. If I want to see a table of how each stat works, I just click a button close to the stats menu button. If I want to know what all of the genes does and how dominant there are, I could access a table throughout the genes menu. The tables themselves then just give the according stat or gene on the left side and the explanation or stats they give on the right side. I know there is already a wiki about it, but I don't want to necessarily have to tab out of my game and open up a laggy wikia site for finding my information, and I think a built-in in-game table would just make it a lot smoother. There are also some stats which interactions I didn't completely figured out yet, so I hope they would be explained in the tables. For example, camouflage, scentless and stealth. I considered if they reduce other creatures perception of them weaker by the mentioned amount in eyesight, smelling and hearing range. By doing some tests with a non-tribe nicheling, this turned out as not completely correct:

4 stealth non-tribe, 1 scentless non-tribe

2 distance

3 hearing tribe, 3 smelling tribe

The tribe can smell him but not hear him. The tribe can't see him either, because hes hiding in the bush.

But after he moved out to a tile clear from grass 3 tiles away, my tribe could suddenly hear and smell him.

The camouflage thing surprised me too, since it can be easily stacked up to 4 while in a bush, which outnumbers a nichelings vision range by far. Then i considered if it's referring to the Bearyenas where i believe I have seen one with 6 eyesight recently, which would mean they would only see my nichelings within 2 range. Whatever it is, I would look forward to be able to look it up in my help book.

The Game Mechanics Guide, or maybe some a little bit smoother name, would include stats and information about the different plants, biome tiles and other creatures. Explaining what different interactions with them causes including possible specific situations. For example i needed to find out the hard way that a nicheling with no collecting ability still poisons itself trying to collect form a poison berry bush but failing in the process.

Pair/Group Assigner - I would often assign Nichelings together that have an optimal chance of giving birth to offspring with good genetics or that have some similar purpose. However, in a big tribe with many nichelings, it is hard to keep an eye on each pair/group, making it necessary to recheck the genes of each nicheling till I find my pair again. If I could simply assign nichelings into a group, this could solve the problem. The groups would be visible by some signs above the head of each nicheling that is in the same group as the selected nicheling. The groups could be also filtered in the filter mentioned above.

Full Family Tree - Giving full view to the very ancestors of your current tribe. Preferably zoomable. If there any issues about this considering the size, I would take it as a toggable setting too.

Structured Mutation Menu - The mutation menu right now is kind of a mess. Most of the genes for a specific gene type are scattered all around the menu. Just rearranging them grouped for each gene type should do the point.

Multiplayer - Niche in multiplayer would be the event of the millenium in my opinion. I know that bringing an offline game to online multiplayer is a large step, but if it is added at the given time, it would definitely add a great option to the game.

Sincerely,

Felix