Video Game / The Tree of Life

Shown: Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Mu (µ).

The Tree of Life is an Idle Game by pg132 made in The Modding Tree and released in 2021. You initially produce Life Points and can reset for Hydrogen. As you collect more of it, you get upgrades and new chemicals to grow stronger. Phase 1 focuses on several chemical elements and letter-based minigames, Phase 2 goes from lives and more complex chemicals to ecosystems and plants, while Phase 3's theme is humanity. This is potentially the biggest and most ambitious out of all games made in the engine so far, expect to spend more than a week on it.

The game is playable on galaxy.click or Githack.

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This game provides examples of:

• Absurdly Short Level: There are two Anti- challenges where you only need to get 1 point to win, which happens instantaneously. They're only there for satisfaction and affect some things that rely on Anti- challenge completions.
• Achievement System: There are more than 1000 achievements to earn for getting resources or completing challenges, with their names just being their respective number ("One", "Two", "Three", etc.)
• Alliterative Name: The version name starting from 1.0, Advil's Auspicious Acension [sic].
• All the Worlds Are a Stage: The All challenge combines all prior challenges in the Human layer, while None combines all right challenges.
• Alphabetical Theme Naming: The Minigame sidelayer has minigames and points simply named A, B, C, D, and E.
• Anti-Frustration Feature: Holding the mouse button while the cursor is placed over upgrades purchases them automatically. This really comes in handy when you have to buy them again after a reset.
• Are You Sure You Want to Do That?: The game will warn you that entering hard mode while already being in extreme mode is not advised and ask if you want to proceed.
• Bottomless Fuel Tanks: Averted. Your car's fuel in the D minigame goes down by 1% every second, decreasing its speed. You have to push a button to recover a percentage of fuel.
• Cap:
  • Color levels and B buyables are capped at 5000.
  • Nitrogen XXV's effect maxes out at 1e50000.
  • Dilation can't be completed more than 110 times.
  • Gem effects max out at 10000.
  • Life exponential dividers are hardcapped at 1e9.
  • Mu II is capped at 1e50 until you reach 5e1435 Cells.
  • The Primary challenge can be beaten up to 10 times (later extended to 25), Secondary 95, and Tertiary 3.
  • With Tissue LXIII, the goal for the Primary challenge doesn't go above 1e8500 Stem Cells.
  • The level cap for Taxonomy buyables is 400. The Chromosomes III upgrade increases that by 4*(Chromosomes-37), eventually capping at 850. Then the Chromosomes VIII upgrade increases that by 3*Chromosomes, going as high as 1100. Then the Chromosomes 14 milestone increases that further by Chromosomes - 234, up to 1210. Chromosome Milestone 29 then replaces that with 1500+Nucleuses, but Chromosome Milestone 32 reduces that to 1200+Nucleuses. Some other upgrades and Truly Chromosomeless also affect the cap, but the main affecting factor in the end is Human Milestone 44 which makes it 10*Plants (which is further boosted by Human Milestones 71 and 95) and is expected to go above 1e40 by the endgame.
  • Multiplier from Humans to Biomass gain is limited to 1e100, the one to Ecosystem gain to 1e500, and the rest to 1e1000.
  • The effects of "Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth" always have some kind of limit. They are eventually maxed at .08/2.6/.08.
  • Humans gain is capped at 1e56000 before you beat the Left challenge to prevent Life Points from inflating too much and at 1e120000 before you buy Humans LXXV to prevent potential Human inflation from not getting certain upgrades that weaken that resource's gain.
  • The Reduce buyable in Nitrogen Science maxes out at 6.
  • Science and Nitrogen Science bonus from Lives caps at 1e10.
• Challenge Run: A bunch of layers have challenges where you have to reach a certain resource with a restriction and get a reward for doing so. The Life layer even has challenges where you need to select a number that applies multiple challenges at once (so C72 would apply C7 twice and C2 once), providing respective Gems if you do well enough.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Each layer has its own color.
    • Hydrogen: Brownish yellow
    • Carbon: Green
    • Oxygen: Light blue
    • Nitrogen: Orangeish brown
    • Phosphorus: Blue
    • Mu (µ): Purple
    • Life: Dark red
    • Amino: Orange
    • DNA: Dark brown
    • Cells: Neon green
    • M_C (Stem cells): Dark purple
    • Tissues: Magenta
    • Organs: Rose petal
    • M_H (Heart): Mustard
    • M_K (Kidney): Autumn orange
    • M_L (Lung): Lavender
    • M_I (Intestine): Cerulean
    • Animals: Yellow
    • Chromosomes: Fiery orange
    • M_T (Taxonomy): Dark blue
    • Nucleuses: Pink
    • Species: Brown
    • Ecosystems: Gold
    • Plants: Bright green
    • Humans: Snowy mint
    • Researchers: Navy blue
    • Chemistry: Purplish red
    • Science: Carmine
  • Customizable challenges have slightly different shades depending on what set they're part of, going from red to peach. Once they're maxed, they go from blue to purple. A selected challenge is light green, while a maxed selected challenge is dark green.
  • In the Taxonomy tab, the buyable in orange is the one that's selected, the purple one is the default that is not selected, in light-blue is the cheapest, and the light-green one is not the cheapest but you can afford it. Each row also has a subtly different shade for those.
  • In the Animal Achievements tab, each achievement is normally yellow, but it becomes light-blue if its effects are always active regardless of state.
• Cooldown: After using the Bulk ability in the Humans layer (bulk buys all buyables and grants fifty seconds of Thought production), you have to wait a minute before it can be triggered again.
• Difficulty Levels: Outside of the default difficulty, there's Easy (all bulk buying is done by default, 2x prestige currencies and 4x passive gain currencies gain up to Genes, and pre-Phosphorus resource gain ^1.001), Hard (most passive gains are divided by 4 and other small nerfs), and Extreme (most currency gain as well as mRNA and tRNA base is ^.75, but there's a new Science layer and some other changes). You can match the three difficulty options however you please.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance:
  • In the mu tab, the effects for each one get softcapped and no longer give +0.01 to the power of Phosphorus based on Phosphorus, then softcapped^2 to make it even weaker until that gets removed.
  • Gem effects after 1000 are weakened by x=(7+log10(x))^3.
  • While each Chromosome improves the amount of Genes gained per level base slightly, making its production rise far faster with each one owned as a result, several Chromosome milestones halve Gene gain based on Chromosomes or have other negative effects. That said, other milestones can disable them.
  • Chromosome effect above starting from 76 is 1.004^x*2, but above 95 x changes to (190*x-9025)^0.5 to not make that rise too quickly. Animal Milestone 32 removes the softcap, but replaces the effect formula with 1.002^x*2.66. Then it gets reduced to 1.002^x*2.605 by Chromosome Milestone 20. Eventually, the effect settles at a multiplicatory growth at 0.03*x+7.78.
  • "Science is organized knowledge" effect is square-rooted above 10 because it would otherwise decrease from "I think therefore I am"'s cost base too quickly. Human Milestone 80 instead subtracts 5.5 from "IttIa"'s base while lowering "Siok"'s base to 0.009, though you still get better effects in the long run.
• Discard and Draw: There are many points where newer content disables or outright removes weaker older content to make way for stronger effects, mostly to reduce the number of calculations needed per tick:
  • Anti- challenges in the Life layer provide powerful boosts upon completion, but they also disable content from previous layers.
  • Several upgrades and milestones in the Tissues layer nullify token upgrades until those get removed once you unlock the Token II feature.
  • A bunch of upgrades and milestones in the Organs layer disable the positive effects of Anti- challenges, with even more upgrades disabling the effects of gems and the other Life challenges, before eventually the Life layer altogether gets disabled.
• Double Unlock:
  • Starting from the Cells layer, there are times where an upgrade has a "requirement" of doing something else, such as building up enough of a different resource, completing enough of a specific challenge, or raising effect power high enough, before you can buy it with the main resource.
  • The Humans layer is filled with these in both Upgrades and Milestones. Several milestones and the later upgrades have partial effects that only take effect after the player reaches certain amounts of Plants, Thoughts, or Humans, essentially making them sub-milestones.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin: The Tissues layer has upgrade tabs called "Start", "Middle", and "End", each one corresponding to how far you got into the layer.
• Export Save: You can export the 30KB+ save file and paste it into an in-game window. There's also a save bank that lets you click a button to enter a specific progression stage, working as a Password Save of sorts with the different parts of the game it lets you come/return to.
• Factor Breakdown: Unlocking Token II turns the original Token tab into a group of subtabs related to resources. It's always written as "[resource] gain is [formula]" with some letter variables written in red for the formulas and all known multipliers to those variables below.
• Gambling Minigame: C has you press a button to gamble every five seconds and get different suits appear in up to ten slots. You gain C Points based on different results and can spend them on upgrades. Unlike most minigames of this type you don't spend any resources to use it, so the payoff is based solely on the whims of the Random Number God.
• Green Means Natural: The Plants layer which also has buyables named after plant parts is bright green (initially it was gold like Ecosystems until the color was changed in an update to be more accurate and distinct).
• Hard Mode Perks: You can only access the Science layer as well as some exclusive upgrades and milestones while playing extreme mode. Several existing resources also provide new boosts and there are other minor alterations.
• Heart Symbol: The Minigame sidelayer has a classic heart symbol as its icon.
• LOL, 69:
  • The clickable button in the Achievements tab shows "69 nice" when you've clicked it that many times.
  • Plants XII costs 69 Plants and increases make exponent to .69.
• Lucky Seven: The Coffee upgrade affects the interval for automatic gambling and costs 1e777 C Points.
• Missing Secret: The Micro tab has seven upgrades, with the last one called Micronutrient bulk buying its ...waves and ...phone buyables and costing 1e500,000 Micro. Nearly all other buyables have upgrades/milestones that bulk buy them and you can easily reach over e500,000,000 Micro, but no matter how long you wait for the resource to accumulate, there is no eighth upgrade that bulk buys ...soft. Eventually, ...phone becomes useless and the Stem Cells layer is removed anyway.
• Mutual Disadvantage: Token II buyables are nerfed by ones which are in the same row, for example levels in Up Quark weaken Down Quark and vice versa. Some of them are mitigated by upgrades that make their effect based on their peak even if you reset quarks and don't have levels in them.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted. Both Tokens and the E minigame have buyables called Constant, Linear, and Quadratic.
• Out of Focus: The Science layer is a crucial part of extreme mode at first, receiving several upgrades and buyables through the first four original game layers. Once you get to Phosphorus however, the game stops giving it new tabs, while Nitrogen Science maxes out rather early beforehand and all the buyables are soon covered thanks to an autobuyer. It eventually comes back with Protein and DNA Science tabs with some new buyables in the latter, but then it becomes almost useless again after starting Token II.
• Point of No Return: Certain upgrades or other things make layers which are no longer useful inaccessible for your save file. While some of these can be double subverted as some high-level resets bring layers back but disable them again once you reach a certain point, they eventually stick and the early game is gone for good.
  • Anti- challenges in the Life layer make all content up to Nitrogen inaccessible.
  • Phosphorus and Mu are disabled when you get Tissues LXXI.
  • The Life layer is removed once you have Heart XX.
  • Kidney XIII splits the tabs in Organs into separate layers but makes Amino Acid inaccessible.
  • Token² VI removes Cell minigames other than Micro from the layer.
  • Several Human milestones remove layers that came before them. These include 8 to Heart, 12 to Lung, and 13 to Cell, DNA, and Tissues.
  • Some upgrades in the Science layer make obsolete tabs inaccessible. Those include N Sci V to H Research, Protein Sci II to O Research, Protein Sci X to C Research, Protein Sci XXIX to N Research, and Organ Sci III to Protein Research.
• Post-End Game Content: If you're past the endgame, the game will note it with a blue text and state that anything past this point may not be balanced. Whether or not there's any actual content to push for depends on the version. Going as far as possible generally gives enough for one or two upgrades/milestones in the following patch.
• Rainbow Speak:
  • Layers that rely on specific one-letter variables use a different color to avoid confusion with the corresponding points.
  • Oxygenated Blood (OB) and Deoxygenated Blood (DB) are written in purple and blue, respectively.
  • Effects which are added to milestones/upgrades in previous layers are written in red. Unlocking Species provides effects written in purple instead.
• Reset Milestones: A large amount of the layers has milestones that are earned by reaching a certain amount of the resource, usually meant to be the point where the game slows down. A few early ones are unlocked by performing a reset enough times, while later ones are received by getting enough of a resource, with some requiring challenge completions instead. Most of them improve production through things like more beneficial cost/effect bases/exponents, but others unlock autobuyers or keep other upgrades/milestones on the layer reset. The Human layer in particular has 100 milestones that keep getting stronger effects as you get more Plants/Thoughts/Humans (like the one for 63575 Plants making the Mastery V base 2 at 66010 Plants).
• Serial Escalation: Even more than the other trees. The first few layers are mostly stuff on a molecular level. The early midgame focuses on cells, tissues, and organs, basically parts of a single organism. The midgame involves animals and species, though there are also layers based on chromosomes and nucleuses. The lategame has ecosystems and plants. That said, Phase 3 (endgame) moves on to Humans and actually reverses some of the escalation (Life Points would go above the eeee990 mark, but beating Left drops point gain to above e50,000 which is early game territory).
• Shout-Out:
  • Row 9 of Coin upgrades is the opening lines of Star Wars films, with "rather near here..." instead of "far, far away..."
  • The last five Amino Acids milestones that are exclusive to non-extreme mode are taken from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 106.
  • The Dilation challenge is partially inspired by Time Dilation from Antimatter Dimensions, as the changelog for the entry that added an explanation for it states "[go play AD y'all]".
• Shown Their Work: Many upgrades and parts are taken from actual biological terminology. Cell buyables called "Totipotent" and "Pluripotent" sound like random words related to "Omnipotent" at first, but looking them up reveals those are actual descriptions of cell potency, while the Science layer is full of scientific terms related to its layers.
• Skill Point Reset:
  • You can reset Tokens at any time for no cost, which is crucial as some of the upgrades are intended for the early game with strong but flat multipliers and some are intended for later parts with progressively more effective exponentiation. Additionally, there is sometimes a need for different allocation in general or making sure all tokens are spent as efficiently as possible once only the highest level with a specific buyable or any of them counts.
  • Some upgrades that require Coins in the Token layer lock others out for some time, which is why you need to reset them. However, there's no refund upon doing so.
  • Later on it's possible to reset Token II buyables, which is also necessary to assign them differently as some sets are better for Stem Cell gain while others improve regular Token gain, while some quarks can also be rendered mostly obsolete thanks to Tissue upgrades and force a need to change them to different buyables.
  • Even later it's possible to reset Mastery Token upgrades, either because picking one locks out another that could be more important, to regain M. Tokens if the price of a purchased upgrade has been permanently reduced, or to just pick a different upgrade if needed and you can't afford it otherwise.
• Theme Naming:
  • Most upgrades follow the name of the layer/minigame with a corresponding Roman numeral.
  • The upgrades for the C minigame are all named after foods that start with the letter "C".
  • D minigame buyables are named after car parts.
  • Protein buyables are named after RNA molecules.
  • Stem cell buyables are named after terms for stem potency.
  • The Micro tab has words which would often start with the prefix "micro", like "waves", "soft", and "meter" as parts of buyables or upgrade names.
  • The Kidney buyables spell out "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse".
  • The Lung challenges are named after parts of the bronchial tree that moves air into and out of the lungs.
  • The Intestine buyables are "Intestine" with different capitalisation and underlining.
  • The Animal Taxonomy buyables are themed after taxonomic rank classifications.
  • The Plant buyables are named after plant parts.
  • The Human buyables are quotes from famous philosophers.
  • Human challenges are named after adjectives related to morality and their antonyms.
  • The first three Hydrogen Science buyables are named after properties of hydrogen atoms, while the other three are different ways to measure a minute.
  • The three Nitrogen Science buyables use the names of three environmentalist principles: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.
  • The DNA Science buyables are named after DNA enzymes.
• Timed Mission: You can only spend 60 seconds in a Cells minigame. This incentivizes making sure you can get enough of the minigame's currency for the upgrade you need.
• Wham Episode: The DNA layer. This is the point in the game where the earlier layers Hydrogen, Carbon, Oxygen, and Nitrogen (as well as minigames A to E) are removed permanently.
• Womb Level: The Organs layer has several organs as part of tabs with mechanics related to them, like a Heart that beats in while making oxygenated blood and beats out while making deoxygenated blood, Kidneys that filter said blood out depending on which one you have selected at the moment, a Lung that produces Air and can put it in challenges named after parts of the respiratory system to improve its effect, and an Intestine with buyables that produce Energy.
• "X" Makes Anything Cool: The Chromosome layer is marked as X. Downplayed as it's likely named after the well-known X chromosome, and the letter C was taken by Cells, while two letters are reserved for sublayers.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: The Iota minigame in the Cells layer has a function that slows down game time by 100x, resulting in 0.01 seconds passing per real second. The purpose is for stopping after specific seconds since point gain is based on seconds passed at prime, even, and/or odd numbers, specifically to give you time to maximize buyables while still gaining points, but the function will continue outside the minigame for however long you set the timer, slowing down the game heavily until you clear it with a shift-click.

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