“How would you handle different time scales?”

That is one of the few things I haven’t been able to tackle yet. As simpler lifeforms actually need multiple generations to accomplish anything while the more complex lifeforms will only need one.

Maybe you’ll play through several generations of plants, that way you will be able to spread your pollen around and grow in total population each year to come. So while a human might play through 20 years of a life a plant will get 20 generations of the species.

Compression is an option too but it would feel weird. If you play a fly you will only have a fraction of even a plant’s life. If whatever you do as a fly still needs to span the full 20 years of the human, the fly would have the world around it move at a fast-forward speed.

Another option I have considered is repeating and stacking. The flower life would actually repeat 20 times within the human life. The effects of the previous flower lives will stay in effect so if you send out pollen to grow more flowers it will effectively spread the plant while also keeping the plants left by the previous replay.