So, the nursery is good and all, but I, personally, am never able to get any progress down when using it. So, how do you artificially create your creatures, then?

Well, step one is to make your world. I'd suggest a simple map, and only about 20 starting potatoes. Collect all of the potatoes into the nursery, but seperate one from the others. You will want to select the creature and click the button that says 'Genetic Engineering'.

Once you're in the genetic engineering menu, create the creature you want to have. Go nuts! Once you are done creating your beautiful little abomination click 'Generate', and save the geneticly engineered schematic. Give it a goofy name. Do whatever! [I'd also reccomend setting the creature's empathy to 1, so that the creatures don't constantly kill eachother (even with herbivores)].

Now, you'll probably have noticed that the creature you selected didn't change at all. This is normal! What you want to do now is click on the nursery button and click 'Select Target', at which point you will select the genetically engineered abomination you just made.

Now comes the somewhat-tedious part. Highlight all of your potatoes, and click the 'Splice Genes' button (The DNA symbol) from the creature toolbar. Then, choose to splice the potato's genes with your creation. This will cause the potato to generate offspring with your creation.

Every generation, spam the revive tool in case any creatures have lost health, then feed all living creatures. Then, splice the genes of the potatoes with your very own frankentater. Note that your creatures will look exactly like your creation a LOT sooner then they'll act like it, so be sure to check the overview every-so-often, so that you don't accidently turn your gazelles into rutheless killers, or your bears into absolute cowards. The mental changes happen excruciatingly slowly.

(Protip: All of the cool head shapes appear at number 50+)

Feel free to comment any questions or concerns you have. I'll always be here to help, even if your question doesn't concern the guide itself! :D