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Hey folks We are currently working on Niche 1 day per week with 4 people. The game is currently profitable for us, even though it's not making a ton of money. I think money-wise this will stay about the same this and maybe even next year. As mentioned, we will do one more big update this year. I don't know about next year yet. It very much depends on how things go for us as a company. We'll keep you up to date!

Alright, so here is my headcanon for what exactly the player is in the world of Niche. A research drone sent by future humans to study life on an exoplanet. This is the reason why the Niche animals have portmanteaus of Earth animal names as names - those are what the human astrobiologists were reminded of. The genetics of the animals are close, but not quite, like that on Earth - for example, phenotypical changes are in at least one species much faster and more drastic than in any multicellular lifeform here. Those peculiar genetics are the point of the research this probe is conducting. The hexfield landscape is how the drone's systems maps the area. When you "control" the nichelings, you are actually just recording and logging their activities - the drone is able to interface with the nicheling's brains, which comes with the downside of only sensing what they sense as well as an aerial view from a satellite or atmospheric vehicle. It also means that you can't actually see the difference between "what they do" and "what I do". So, what do you think? Plausible?

It always looks so strange when the babies come out with the horns, so I thought it would be idea if the horns would grow as they age. Newborns would have no horns, babies with 1 gem would have little stubs. Ones with 2 gems would just have a smaller version of the horns than the adults? Once they become adults their horns would be fully grown.

So, I just randomly had an idea for a new gene. It would maybe look kind of like a snake head, with frills on the sides. If a creature comes within a certain range (maybe three or four spaces?) the nicheling with the gene has an option to spit at it. The creature would be poisoned, and wouldn't take damage right away. Perhaps you could make puddles on certain spots, and creatures who step in them (including nichelings) would be poisoned. Edit: Based on people's suggestions, I think that I should change it to instead paralyze the target for a day or two, although only a few turns for larger creatures. However, there is also a very small chance to poison the target. Edit 2: Should probably add some possible unlock conditions. I think that it would be unlocked after eating a certain number of toxic berries and licking a certain number of times. Another option could involve picking from the carnivorous plant.

Maybe add a tutorial that step by step teaches you how to build and use a robot. P.s. Add more movement types.

wheels that you can change the size of. Then we could make little deployable rover or turrets

Spitting is something I wanted to add since FOREVER. Some of you might still remember that the Derp Snout used to be called Spit Snout, the reason being that we wanted to give it spitting ability It would be able to spit at Rabills and other small prey, which would glue them to the ground for a day. Take my upvote!

Yaaay, thanks @Micha

Edit should now have no time limit, we also removed the reaction limit.

This sounds like a great idea!

Maybe it could be a Llama head that you can use to spit at creatures with. Just imagine having a whole tribe of llamas, with everyone spitting at rabbils and crabbits and every other living thing they can find Would probably only have +1 attack.

Jup, we are currently fixing bugs and working on bears

or maybe insted of "You unlocked a new Gene" it says "You Unlocked Nimble Fingers/Bearyena Snout/ Water Body/Claw"

Hello, I'm Saphire. I'm a student for Oslo, Norway, and I'm just a few months away from completing my master thesis in modern Middle Estern history. I've played Niche since its release on Steam, but only recently joined the community. I also enjoy playing cattail, stardew vallet and skyrim:)

I agree that these genes could be improved. I think +2 smelling to gills and +1 smelling to platypus beak would be reasonable, including +1 feeding from the bottom for every webbed paw.

webbed paw could do with some collecting or fishing ability somehow, as right now having a double-webbed paw nicheling is kind of worthless, you can swim really fast, but you sure can't do anything with it. i could see webbed paw with either fishing 1, and / or feeding from the bottom ability like Platypus beak, it could be liked the underwater version of digger's paw.

There is currently no model for the female peacock tail because it doesn't do anything. The devs plan on adding a smaller peacock tail to the females in the future though

Hi! I've played Niche since jungle update. I'm working on a scratch projekt about breeding nichelings. It's gonna take a lot of time but I hope it will be worht it. I live in Finland and I'm 13. I have a turtle, two guineapigs and four rats

I think they'll continue making new updates as long as Niche remains profitable. They've done three giveaways in succession, so I imagine the game isn't doing too badly in the money department. I even doubt this is the last huge update as we have staff coming by pretty frequently to support our suggestions or tell them why they can't be implemented. Now for the dreaded acronym: DLC. I absolutely hate it. The Niche devs haven't fallen into the trap of leaving out content that should've been in the game to begin with, but I worry suggesting it may go down that road. It's - unfortunately - a smart business decision, and younger gamers don't know the difference compared to now and how things were before, (meaning they'll buy DLC content regardless) but it's a slippery slope that makes me nervous. I feel like raising the price of the game for future buyers is more fair, but I know money talks louder than anything, so I suppose we'll just have to wait and see.

Currently we can only attack wanderers but I would like the option to be able to attack your own tribemates as well. (I want it mainly for role playing reasons). We would probably have to have a similar locking system to it like with the alpha, beta and omega ranks so that you don't accidentally attack your creatures by misclicking What do you guys think?

For random stuff that people might want to talk about like why this exists, things that nobody can answer.

Hi! I realllly love Niche's sound track and sometimes I pull the game up just to listen to the music! I was wondering in maybe ya'll would make some special music for any island that would lean towards piano? Maybe Oregon music for the Swampy islands? With animal sounds added in of course to set the mood just right. I just think Niche needs more music in general, but that could just be me. I don't want to make the tone different for Niche, so if it's not a good idea let me know! Thanks for listening!

I am confused because my Eve has wings. Is this a wing or am I just lucky?

Now that the developers have reached all their kickstarter goals, do you think that they will continue with large updates such as the Wings Update or the Jungle Update? Or do you think they will continue to release new material but as DLC since the game is technically finished (as in released as a game rather than early-access)? I do remember reading in an update that they would continue investing in Niche if they sold a certain amount of copies and were able to make up for the money spent. Did they reach that goal? What do you guys think? Sorry if this isn't the right place to post this, I didn't know where to ask.

I don't know if this is a bug or not this is the first time I've seen these things But I kinda assumed that them flying was a bug so I thought that I should report it

Behold the United Space Federations latest Corvette class assault spaceship: The USF Death Falcon. Outfitted with the most powerful computer system ever deployed by the USF, coupled with a massive high energy EM panel array that allows for the most complex communication system ever developed. Unfortunately enemy hostiles keep making it cry...

This is a good idea, and in fact, I think all notifications should be changed in this way. They would be much more helpful if they called your nichelings by name instead of as "one of your animals".

Welcome everybody Nice to have you here!

Oh thank you! @Unboltingcat

I just want to send out a thank you for releasing this and I can't wait to see the whole product. There are a few things I would like to mention. Within the first 10 minutes after starting the game on Whale Island, I was "attacked" by three Bearnyas (?) and two rouge males. Just letting you know if this is supposed to be an easier starting site. Again, thank you.

Honestly, I can only say as an optional thing you can turn on and off. Right now, it feels way too easy to accidentally misclick icons when you're moving creatures around, with how the icons overlap depending on your camera angle, and accidentally hitting a creature would really suck.

Made a 7 segment display driver out of logic gates. It is controlled using binary, and displays zero by default. Logic is based off of the diagram attached Controls are as follows : | ALPHA1 = 8 | ALPHA2 = 4 | ALPHA3 = 2 | ALPHA4 = 1 | Button | Output 4 1 3 2 3,4 3 2 4 2,4 5 2,3 6 2,3,4 7 1 8 1,4 9

Believe me, the "Kikonoko eyebrows" can look a lot worse

@oof.zip oh yeah I often get carried away when there's too many creatures and start breeding the wrong pairs. That's an intersting system tho, maybe too much to handle for me since I often end up with millions of nichelings but I could keep that in mind. I often just change the gems of two creatures that will breed together to kinda match so I won't forget who breeds with who when I have toons of nichelings but that's about it. Sometimes I change them just for costumization, for example match the eye colour of the nicheling.

Oh thats weird, I'll have a look at the settings.

I would like to introduce you to the Alpha of the Tribe of The Sun, Laisre! (With the newly fixed antennas)

I found some bugs. I kept on getting the peacock tail and it didn't even show.

I've been mostly just playing with breeding pairs, breeding them until they give me a compatible pair, then everyone not breeding goes off to scout or get food while the two that will be breeding the next lot move towards the ports. I'll usually have two or three breeding pairs, depending on the number of tiles on the ports. One pair will be collecting, the other is fighters. I really want to play a game where I make it a lot more story driven, but I always find that I end up going back to my default, which makes the game less interesting after awhile. I get too worried about not having pairs that won't make sick babies. People who do challenges and stories always impress me because of that!

So far in my tribe, I've used one method of breeding for a while that seems to work really well, and keeps the tribe stocked with food and nesting material. In the tribe, I write down the generation (Currently generation N/14) and all of the nichelings born in it, their immunity, gender, and any defects they may have. When all of their parents have stopped breeding (recorded on the page next to it) I start pairing/grouping them up like this (names are examples from my thingy now): Gen N - All members Kuro - F+G Koanasi - I+B Roduk - I+C Asakona - G+D Nukirta - D+G Roskinku - STAR+A Dukkir - G+A, Haemophilia, deformed paw And so on. On the other page, once all of the members of a generation have been born, I do this: Anarasi: F+B - Roduk - Kirnuvan - Duknuvan Roskinku: STAR+A - Koanasi - Asakona - Anarasi - Koana - Israsi Rara: K+E - Kuro - Nukirta - Rokuvan - Dukkaru The way this works is that I've divided up the land into parts that have a lot of natural nests in close proximity, each with a colour assigned to it. I've explored all of the land on the island I'm on, so this is a lot easier to manage (Even though the nesting areas are often packed with nichelings). Traits aren't big to me yet, since I don't have the most recent update/s for some reason, only survival ones matter. After a long time of breeding lone animals with haemophilia, blind eyes, and deformed paws, I have completely gotten rid of them! Almost all of my animals have good eyesight, normal blood clotting, and 6 fertility, which took forever lmao, so breeding is a whole lot easier. With my groups, the animal with the coloured name is basically the alpha, as they're the animal that breeds with all the others listed below them. The pairings/groupings are made mostly using immunity as the deciding factor, defects second, and if all survival needs are fine, I choose based on appearance/other traits (claw, nimble fingers, cracker jaw, etc). The alpha only breeds once with each member of their group, unless they produce really good kids, so I don't have 60 nichelings in my tribe. Although I only breed once for each animal, I still have 42 nichelings, which isn't that bad when you have 2000 food and 600 nesting material. I generally try to have my nichelings reproduce mid-adult stage, since getting them to have kids really early results in overpopulation. The reason I get so much food is because when animals that either weren't selected for breeding or have had all the kids they were assigned for, they go off and "retire" (they do this still pretty young) to live out the rest of their lives using their best traits. Say if an animal has claws, fishing tail, and webbed paw, that animal will most likely breed, and then go off to a lake to catch fish every day until they die. If another animal has double nimble fingers and cracker jaw, they'll sit by a bush and collect food and prey. You get the point. When you have about 10-15 adults that have always been somewhat banished from the nesting area or are done with breeding at all times, this method gets you a lot of food and nesting material. The cycle with the animals continues using this.

I m Fater of three cildren and Nimbus an Niche are in game genres where i would like to see my children playing when that time arrives. For now im very much interested your games. I live in Finland where santa is living and in my pic there is santas little helpers.

I love cats, dogs and monkeys. But I'm allergic to the first two... not sure about monkeys though

I love all of those pets! I have a Belgian Malinois called Shira, she is four years old and is completely crazy. She has the special ability to get on my nerves but I still love her more than I could describe <3 I'm also a bit into dog training and I practice with her every day (when I'm not studying in another city) and sometimes with other dogs like her father. Once I'm completely independent I'll have a lot more animals like rats, bearded dragons, cats and others

I wanted to study Biology but I had to move to a very expensive city (Madrid) and ended up studying Environmental Sciencies (I'm also loving this degree!). Right now I'm in my third year of Collegue (if everything goes well I'll end next year!) and then I'll fulfill my dream of specializing in Zoology, which has always been my goal. I really want to work breeding endangered fauna in captivity to reintroduce them and helping the endangered species in the wild^^

And he has the scorpion tail as well! I haven't found that tail yet but my first purr snouted creatures were two warrior twins

I love these silly babies <3 <3 <3 It has been my dream to visit and pet deer since I was a child and I got that chance this past summer! I've always grown up around deer living in TN ,but they have always been a mystical sort of secret animal to me which is why I'm so drawn to them <3

Hi! I do not have Niche yet but am hoping to get the game, it looks super fun and I am excited to be part of the community

Yes, either a bit less than +4 or maybe +4 but they only work when swooping and not when attacking normally.

@EmberSky this would be awesome in combination with wings! Especially with the new swooping interaction

@Dr. Nearo I feel you could counter it with dig, but if you dug it up the snake would go on the offensive and try to bite the nearest nicheling, and then run to the nearest and currently abandoned mole hole, and duck in there and go under the ground again. Or it would be possible for them to have their own nests, if Niche would add that. And I think if a snake went by a mole the mole would either die or kill the snake.