Life Cycle (VoxelMonster)

**Life Cycles** are the general progressions of monster growth in Voxel Monster, where a monster egg transforms into new, varied forms depending on their inherent characteristics.

## Overview

At any given stage of life, a monster's life cycle is directly connected to its lifespan, a timer that is visible at the top of the screen for most of the game. This lifespan is an important component for a monster's life cycle, where the amount of time during one stage of life determines how long it will take to arrive at the next stage, as well as how long a monster remains at it's current stage of life.

### Eggs

The very first stage of life, Eggs represent the most basic form of monster existence. They start out being unable to be fed, trained, or interacted with by the player outside of accelerating their lifespan. Since they cannot be fed, the time spent as an egg does not contribute to evolution conditions such as Hunger time.

Across all four egg types, this stage only has one evolution to grow into with no variance, and only takes a couple of minutes to complete.

Eggs only appear when the player puts them there when no other monster is present. They also cannot be found from random encounters and fought, although players are able to have their own placed eggs fight summoned monsters, or any monsters lingering after a previous pet was removed.

### Baby and Child Stages

After a egg has hatched, a new Baby-generation monster is born. These monsters are able to be fed foods, gaining access to weight changes, energy generation, training, and allowing the monster to poop. Counters such as Hunger also begin to count up.

For all four Baby-stage monsters, they share a similar lifespan of only a few hours, being very quick to generate energy and become hungry. Once they reach the end of their lifespan, they grow into one of four Child stage monsters, with no chance to fail and die.

Children-stage monsters are quite similar to the prior stage, having overall longer lifespans ranging from several hours to over a day, as well as seeing their metabolism slow down, with energy rates and hunger increases slowing much more noticeably. At the end of their lifespan, they grow into one of four Adult stage monsters with no chance of failure.

### Adult and Ultra Stages

Adult and Ultra stage monsters follow some of the prior generation's trends, further decreasing metabolism in the form of low energy gains and hunger growth. In exchange, many Adult stage monsters live for over a day, with Ultra monsters often living shorter lives than their prior adult stages.

The major deviate at this stage going forwards regards evolution conditions. Unlike prior generations which split off up to four varied forms depending on their conditions, Adults are much more restricted, often having access to one further evolution, with the best outcome being granted up to three possibilities once their lifespan expires. Evolving into an Ultra stage monster is also not guaranteed, causing any monster that fails to satisfy all evolution condition requirements to instead die and be sent to the graveyard.

Ultra stages are the evolutionary ends of their monster family tree, having no further evolutions to obtain. Granted similar metabolism of the Adult stage, as well as some of the best stat growth of any generation, Ultra monsters are some of the best fighters for battles. Once their timer is completed, since there are no further evolutions, they will perish.