Games with Breeding Mechanics

[Chemical123]

I know it sounds weird but I just finished my campaign in Crusader Kings 2 where I finished breeding a line of genius rulers.

Anyways. Genre does not matter. RTS, TBS, RPG, FPS w/e as long as I have genetic traits that can be passed down generation to generation to make ultimate characters. AO games are welcome as well.

 

[Bad Jim]

The game that really goes big with this is Fire Emblem: Awakening. You get over a dozen characters, and putting nearly any male/female pair together for enough battles will make them marry and produce offspring. And these are named characters, with written dialogue, and so are the offspring.

EDIT: Yes it is explained how the kids can be useful in combat but I don't pay nearly enough attention to the plot

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I just mash Pokemon into each other until the intended results are achieved. <.<

 

[Pseudonym]

Well, pokemon (I think it was from gen2 onwards) has breading mechanics. Not sure if it's what you are looking for. It isn't its most prominent feature. If you want to breed pokemon to play through the story with you're going to have to be a little patient and prepare for at least some grinding. Breeding them is a lot easier when you are done or nearly done with the game as you'll have all pokemon and moves you want available, you'll have a ditto and some phanphies/zigzagoons with pickup for rare candies to check your pokemons IV's. Can't really think of much else with breeding in it.

 

[Kopikatsu]

There is a game called Conception along with it's sequel, Conception 2.

I'm not super knowledgeable about the games but my understanding is that you're a guy who knocks up several Princesses and then assembles your bastard children into a party to save the world.

 

[ccggenius12]

Sounds like someone needs to play Monster Rancher. Older games generated starting monsters based on disks you put in your gaming machine, the most recent iteration makes one based on what you doodle (It's for DS). The whole game is raising monsters with a limited time frame to live, so you can fight in tournaments with them, and then use their genetic material to breed stronger ones. The breeding system in Pokemon and Dragon Quest: Monsters are basically less intensive, dumbed down versions of what you do here.

 

[gigastar]

Dwarf Fortress keeps track of family for all named sentient creatures. If you run a single fortress long enough, most of your dwarves will end up being descended from the migrants.

Ive never found any convincing evidence that traits are passed down in the family though, since extracting that information from the several submenus for each individual is tedious, to say the least.

Another one i heard about was called Mewgenics. Currently in development hell last i checked.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

I just mash Pokemon into each other until the intended results are achieved. <.<

The few times I've bred Pokemon together that's pretty much how it goes for me.

I literally have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to Pokemon breeding. :/

*throws Pikachu and Onix together*

BREED, DAMN YOU.

 

[Grouchy Imp_v1legacy]

First game that comes to mind is the often overlooked Gene Wars from Bullfrog. An RTS game that was released around the same time as Red Alert and Warcraft 2 (hence why it is often overlooked), it centred around breeding new life to rebuild destroyed ecosystems, terraforming and repopulating planets wiped clean of life in an interstellar war, and co-incidentally engineer biological killing machines with which to settle the scores of said interstellar war. Because even if the Armistice stopped the factions from going at one another again if a base was wiped out by a horde of marauding raptors that just happened to have developed fire-arm resistant armour plating and just happened to have set up a breeding colony close to the resource farms of one of the factions then that was just natural selection wasn't it?

 

[Fractral]

That's also how I play CK2. Switch to Elective (or Ultimogeniture if you're playing a Dharmic ruler) and marry/concubine every woman with a good congenital trait. Make babies until you get a male with at least one good congenital trait and then set him as your heir. It gets even better if they won't marry you so you send your armies to raid their capital, kidnap the woman in question and then just force them to become your concubine. I have fond memories of stealing every genius and strong woman in India..

Pokemon has some pretty in depth breeding mechanics, since moves, stats and natures get passed down from parents. Along with base stats and effort stats each pokemon has a hidden stat increase called its 'Individual Value' for each stat, which goes from 0 to 31. When you breed two pokemon up to five of the 12 parent stats are passed on. What it means in practice is that you make these crazy long breeding chains to try and get a pokemon with 31's in all the stats you want, the nature and ability you need and the moves you want. It can take quite a long time, though since Gen 6 it's been somewhat easier.

 

[direkiller]

It's the entire point of the Petz games
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petz

 

[razor343]

There used to be this really cool browser game called Wild Isle that let you breed different creatures, splice their DNA and even sell/trade the DNA to other players. It appears to be dead however and the only searches for it indicate that just before it got shut down the admins basically locked the game behind and invite system, god knows why. I wish it still existed, honestly.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

The Total War games allow you to foster positive or negative traits depending on the environment you keep your family members in. If they are constantly on the battlefield, they get a ton of positive traits, if they are in well maintained cities, they get good management traits. But certain buildings, disease and overpopulation can lead to high corruption levels which make your family members lose leadership and morale. It's a tricky system but it's pretty simple to stack the deck in your favor if you know what you're doing.

 

[Raggedstar]

I just mash Pokemon into each other until the intended results are achieved. <.<

The few times I've bred Pokemon together that's pretty much how it goes for me.

I literally have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to Pokemon breeding. :/

*throws Pikachu and Onix together*

BREED, DAMN YOU.

Silly goose, Pikachu and Onix can't breed. Skitty and Wailord on the other hand... [http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/315/d/7/pokedex_3d_pro__hot_skitty_on_wailord_action_by_auraflareriolu-d5kn06e.jpg]

OT: I don't play a lot of games with heredity, but I will say that Pokemon breeding is a pretty deep rabbit hole and is key to get a (legit, non-genned) team for the competitive metagame. IVs, natures, hidden powers, egg moves, abilities, etc. Crazy time sink. Relies more on parents than the bigger family tree and patterns, but it's something.

Monster Rancher I remember also had a focus on breeding, but I can't remember details of how it works.

I also remember playing Petz and crossing vastly different breeds to see the really weird-looking mutant progeny 0-0. Perhaps not what you're looking for though.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

I just mash Pokemon into each other until the intended results are achieved. <.<

The few times I've bred Pokemon together that's pretty much how it goes for me.

I literally have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to Pokemon breeding. :/

*throws Pikachu and Onix together*

BREED, DAMN YOU.

Silly goose, Pikachu and Onix can't breed. Skitty and Wailord on the other hand... [http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/315/d/7/pokedex_3d_pro__hot_skitty_on_wailord_action_by_auraflareriolu-d5kn06e.jpg]

I've always found that breeding concoction to be extremely absurd, and I have done some breeding research since I've last tried it out. I might go back into it and try again since I have somewhat of a clue now. Not much, but a little one.

But, I know I know...

I was hoping that there would be a spark between the two and have some sweet sweet rockin' action.

...

I'm not apologizing.

 

[cleric of the order]

I can really only say two thing about eugenics simulators

Spoiler: dare you click my magical spoiler

Also there's mew-genetics
It's by team meat so it should be pretty damn good.

 

[FPLOON]

Viva Piñata... Who doesn't want to see piñata bumping uglies in a G-rated fashion?

Other than that, there was this one erotic flash-based breeding game involving monsters... But, I "forgot" the title of the game...

 

[templar1138a]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned this yet:

The Sims 3. Make a Sim (or two), have them "Try For Baby" (they don't even have to be married), and look at the results. You can play a family for literal generations in that wonderful digital dollhouse. The downside is that load times get longer the longer you use the same town (you may want to set the lifespans to shorter than default if you want to play out whole generations before that becomes an issue), and there are a couple key mods you'll need to install to automatically clean up stuck objects so the game doesn't lag.

Still, it's good fun, and it's cheaper and has more features than Sims 4, so that's a win right there.

 

[elvor0]

Jade Cocoon 2(PS2) had some pretty good breeding mechanics. It plays very similar to pokemon, but breeding was the lifeblood of your team, splicing and hatching higher tiers of evolution in order to breed ever fearsome babies. I certainly have fond memories of the game.

There's also Creatures 2, which was a game with no end goal, just to explore a pretty lovingly crafted 2D world. You'd raise your original Norns (a monkey/furby cross breed) baby to adolecence and teach them like you would a pet, then lure them off to explore, discovering lost technology and other nifty stuff. It was pretty damn immersive and impressive to 6 year old me. Breeding was integral to keeping up the gene pool and dealing with death was a big part of the game. Just make sure you patch it, because otherwise your Norns suffered from One Hour Stupidity Syndrone, where they'd forget to breath and eat after and hour of growing up.

It can also get pretty fucking dark, they had a geneticist on hand to guide them in making it as realistic as possible. So it's entirely possible that your creatures can be born with real life issues such as crippling brain defects (no that's not a jab at the games AI), lung problems causing them to be wracked with pain, paralysis of the limbs etc. You can still look after them, or put them down. As a childs game, it certainly forced them to confront concepts of life they may not be quite ready for. Genetic defects can be inhereted, skip generations, the whole shebang.

The whole game was pretty damn complex, giving you every detail of your creatures right down to a nanoscopic level. The game was really innovative (as far as I'm aware) in not only level of complexity of AI and build of the creatures but also of giving you a really fleshed out world, but forcing you to discover it from the creatures point of view. It's sort of like Dark Souls in that respect, you don't know much and there's no one here now, but the atmosphere definitely tells you that there was something here before. It's empty and yet...full at the same time.

 

[ecoho]

The game that really goes big with this is Fire Emblem: Awakening. You get over a dozen characters, and putting nearly any male/female pair together for enough battles will make them marry and produce offspring. And these are named characters, with written dialogue, and so are the offspring. It's not properly explained how a child can be conceived, born, and grow up to be battle ready within the time frame of the story but it is cool.

actually they do, time/dimensional travel. so the kids grow up in a parallel future and as such come fully combat ready