You've seen those dancing lights on the screen. You've probably even noticed that plants grow under those lights. And you're right: that is exactly what makes plants grow. But what are they?


Those lights are "Cellular Automata", and they represent the force of life. You can read the Wikipedia entry here[en.wikipedia.org]. You really don't need to understand it to play the game, but the information is there if you want.

In fact, SplatterCatGaming made an awesome video without ever understanding all the math behind it.

Basically, cellular automata has a 2D grid, and each cell is either "alive" or "dead" (empty). Time passes on the grid, and the state of each cell changes based on the number of neighbors it has, and the current rules.

The rules define whether a cell survives, dies, or is born, according to its neighbors. The game always starts with the rule "Survive 2,3 / Born 3" , meaning that a living cell with either 2 or 3 neighbors will survive, and a dead cell with exactly 3 neighbors will be born. All other configurations will die (0,1,4,5,6,7,8 neighbors).

Think of it this way: life needs a certain amount of support from other life (2 or 3) , requires "parents" to be born, but it can't live in over-crowded areas.

So all this stuff goes on several times a second, and there's really no use in trying to predict exactly what's going to happen. But you do have influence, via the switches on the left. Here is what they look like in a "normal mode" game:

From the top, we have: love, radiation, sunlight, water, carbon, wind, oxygen, phosphorus, nitrogen. But these are really just "plant-themed names" for the 9 different possible rules (numbers of neighbors , 0-8) for the cellular automata! You can see that in "experimental mode":

And the "faces" just represent whether the cell for that rule will die (sad), survive (neutral), or be born (happy).

It is possible to make educated guesses about what will happen, and you can get an intuition for it over time. But not everything is obvious or predictable. For instance setting "carbon" to tolerable/neutral will unsually create a very stable environment. However, setting carbon to favorable will create an explosion of chaos. Bottom line is, play around with it.

A note about "chaos": chaos is a measure of the rate-of-change of total cellular automata states. It is derived from what is happening. It is not a force of its own.

OK, so you've opened the "Plants" menu and seen all these characteristics that plants have.

But what do they mean?

Size: this is how many tiles the plant takes up. "Small" means 1x1 (like mushrooms and grass), "medium" is 2x2 (like deep roots), and "large" is 4x4 (like trees and giant vegetables)

Population: This is how many of that plant you currently have alive in the world.

Maturation: This is how many cycles this plant takes to grow to full size. The actual time may be longer than this, according to the force of life, and the plant's fitness (see below). This can not be changed (at this time).

Social: Here, you will see "Hearty", "Solitary", or "Friendly". In this case, "hearty" means that this plant can grow with or without other plants in the same tile or area. "Solitary" means that this plant will die if another plant is in the same tile. "Friendly" means the plant will only grow if there is already another plant there. If you want to choke something out, making it friendly or solitary is a good place to start.

Elevation: This refers to in what part of the screen the plant will grow, top, middle, or bottom. A plant that "likes" a certain elevation will only grow there. A plant that "hates" an elevation will grow at the other two, meaning you can set something to grow in the top 2/3rds , bottom 2/3rds, or top-and-bottom. No plant can survive in all 3 zones.

Inversion: This refers to whether a plant grows in its natural "ground type" , or an alternate one. Grass normally grows up from the ground, but if you invert it, it will hang down from the ceiling. Mushrooms normally hang, but inverting them will cause them to grow up. Bacteria live in deep dirt, and inverting them will make them live in top-soil. Some plants do not have an "inverted" state.

Fitness: This trait determines how likely this plant is to start growing, and also, to some extent, how much it grows each cycle. Fitness works like this: If this plant is selected, it has a [fitness]-out-of-TEN chance of growing. You can use fitness to further fine-tune the balance of your ecosystem.

There are keyboard shortcuts for the main tools in XenoBloom, in case your clicker-finger gets tired. Hold them down to use them.

• Z : Breath of life
  
• X : Shovel (dig)
  
• C : Scythe (harvest)
  
• V : Net (catch DNA)

"Net" is a new tool added in update 1.1 , and allows you to catch DNA particles that are sometimes emitted when harvesting plants.
You can also quickly activate the net by right-clicking.

XenoBloom update 1.1 adds lots of new controls to experimental mode.

Please note that you must hold down the [SHIFT] key to make these work.

• G: Creates a new random ground map
  
• K: Kills all plants
  
  
• F: Fills everything with dirt
  
• R: Removes all dirt
  
  
• Q: Changes a random survival condition (on the left)
  
• X: Soil expansion
  
• E: Soil erosion
  
• C: Form columns
  
• D: Mineral deposits
  
• T: Tectonic shift
  
  
• 1: Changes the social behavior of a random plant
  
• 2: Changes the elevation trait of a random plant
  
• 3: Changes the direction of growth of a random plant
  
• 4: Changes the fitness of a random plant
  
• 5: Causes a random plant to go extinct
  
• 6: RANDOMIZES ALL TRAITS OF ALL PLANTS!

Ecology mode was added in update 1.1 , and is much more of a puzzle / strategy game. The goal is to balance the ecosystem, by growing the right combination of plants.

Features:
- total power for terraforming and plant modification
- can not adjust environmental conditions
- harvesting does not evolve new plants
- all plants now "make" and "use" one of the conditions, like water and carbon
- use the plants to max out all the conditions to advance
- if you deplete all the natural resources, YOU WILL LOSE!
- evolve all 22 plants to win!
- if you ignore the world in this mode, you will be punished!