Species Shuffler was the unique ability of the Wanderer Philosophy, now only found in the code of Spore, with there being no way to use it in-game. Since the Wanderer now does not have any special tool, this tool was taken out of the game and now only resides in the code.
In-game description[]
Randomizes all species.
Actual effect[]
Species Shuffler would change all the species of a planet to a different species, only adding a little variety and humor to the Wanderer archetype.
Possible Use[]
If the player were to have three small plants of a species, three medium plants of a species, etc., all the way to three carnivores of a species, and a T-3 planet with no life at all, the player could place life to fill the first bar, then fill up the next bar, then fill up the third bar without needing any other species. The cooldown of the Species Shuffler would however most likely be too long for this to work.
Removal[]
This tool was most likely removed because the developers did not want to reward players with the ability to re-sort species for barely playing the game at all and/or skip the stages of the new game.
- This is debatable. In order to play the Space Stage, one must have at least finished the previous stages once. Also the preceding stages are rather short compared to the last stage.
- The only way to start the Space Stage without completing (or unlocking, for that matter) the previous stages is to use the cheat (Ctrl+Shift+C) "levels -unlock". But cheating the way through the game could be another reason why the developers wouldn't want to reward the player with this tool.
- There exists a small, seemingly unused tool sprite that would seem to depict the Species Shuffler, extracted from a User Interface configuration file (
.SPUI) obtained through data mining. Note the paw often associated with the Creature Stage and the "flip" arrows around it:
