Incyray

in addition realism and cuteness, this could add some extra challenge- young nichelings without fully grown horns wouldn't gain any attack points from their horn genes until the horns finish growing.

smaller, poofier ears would indeed make a lot of sense as cold resistant genes, since real animals which inhabit cold climates tend to have shorter ears and other extremities. also, although floppy ears do only appear IRL in domesticated animals, I do think that such a shape might help with providing cold resistance(like built in earmuffs!), and honestly wouldn't be all that unrealistic for a nicheling considering the existence of feathered wings and scorpion tails.

on the note of healing the scars- real scar tissue can't be healed, and unless nichelings are like axolotls lost limbs can't be regrown. a little more realistic approach to that would be that the damaged limbs or eyes and such can be healed only within a few days of when the injury occurs. once it's been long enough for the scars to form, the injury becomes permanent. (this would also put pressure to guard healing fruits closely and make purr snout important but not OP in regards to healing lost limbs or eyes and such)

one thing that I tend to do is give breeding pairs matching last names(and sometimes also gem colors, as I'm seeing other people here also do); it makes them stand out both in the family tree and while looking at the creatures normally. (I also use it to track bloodlines over very long spans of time; EX: descends of a certain certain get a little diamond symbol in their names.)

you're welcome, and alrightio!

I think combining this with the continent island idea(a huge island with a few different biomes contained within) would work best. travel would def be very hard to make work in multiplayer, which kind of gives bonus points to there just being a single giant island. I'm sure how it would work with the fact that niche is turn based, esp in the event that two nichelings from rival tribes try to collect the same food. perhaps if that happens(both click the collect button at the same time), the nichelings will be forced to fight for access to food? one of them will have to chase the other away in order to access the food. although multiplayer would require a LOT of work to implement and such, I think it would actually fit with niche surprisingly well, since real animals compete with members of their own species and with other species! it would also really force the players to specialize and find stable niches, where they dont compete for food and space as much(ex: player 1 eats smelly fruit and is stealthy to avoid predators, player 2 eats fruit from carnivorous plants and has high attack). rival tribes might even be able to 'diverge', wherein if the two player tribes become different enough they can no longer breed together, becoming different species(although that's a whole other can of worms to think about).

oh man, look at that! :0 (also, your UI design looks p nice too! it's actually p good to see different ideas for how it could look) ALSO, I noticed that you also added a thingo to show the creature's age- which another absurdly useful little thing to have! (esp when preparing to travel to a new island)

Personally I think that sifting through a large tribe to find mates for your nichelings is the most tedious thing in the game. I'm no game dev so I don't know how easily this would be implemented,, but here is my idea(with visuals wowee!)- The idea is to add another tab to the family tree. you select a given nicheling, click this button/tab, and it will highlight all nichelings of the opposite sex whose immunities are compatible with the selected nicheling's immunity. Here I used a little diamond to show compatible mates but it could be done with another symbol/ect.! this feature would save a LOT of time and tediousness, without removing any challenges. It would also help a lot with maintaining smooth flow.