Thrive (Video Game)

Thrive
Developer(s)	Revolutionary Games Studio
Publisher(s)	Revolutionary Games Studio
Engine	Godot
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Linux
Release	Early Access: 26 November, 2021 [1]
Genre(s)	God game, life simulation, Simulation video game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Thrive is an Early access Speculative evolution simulation game developed by Revolutionary Games Studio where players control the history of an alien civilization, from the early beginnings of life to its ascendancy. Currently, only the Microbe stage is playable, where the player controls a single microbe and slowly evolves it over millions of years. The game was initially a fan project inspired by Spore, intending to introduce more hard scientific concepts to a similar game style. After years of troubled development, Revolutionary Games was formed to oversee the development of Thrive, and the game was officially put out on online game stores on November 26, 2021. Despite this, the game is fully Open source and can be downloaded for free from the Developer's website. ^[2]

Gameplay

Thrive Gameplay is intended to be split into seven "stages", representing seven different levels of evolution and technological progress needed to become an interstellar civilization. The list is composed of the Microbe, Multicellular, Aware, Awakening, Society, Industrial and Space stages, of which only the Microbe stage is fully realized.

Microbe Stage Gameplay

In the Microbe stage, players start by controlling a unicellular Prokaryote, representing the last common ancestor of all life on an alien planet. Every action the cell does uses ATP, which must be manufactured by the cell. If ATP runs out, the cell takes damage until it dies. Early on in the game, this can only be done through consuming Glucose, but with evolution the player can also metabolize Hydrogen sulfide, Iron, perform Photosynthesis or kill and then consume other cells. The Player Cell can gather these chemicals from the game world itself, where they appear as colorful clouds. The main gameplay loop is to collect enough Ammonia and Phosphates to reproduce asexually, the process of which allows them to evolve. As the game progresses, players can unlock more advanced cell parts which allow them to detect compounds, shoot toxins or mucilage, communicate with cells of the same species and use spikes to injure other cells.

The Game World itself is split into "patches", which represent different biomes on the planet. The player, and hence life on the planet, begin in a Volcanic Vent patch, referencing the theory that life began around Hydrothermal Vents. Patches of the same biome may occur more than once in a game world. Biomes include Sea Floors, Underwater Caves, Ice Sheets, Tidepools and River Estuaries. Each biome has unique characteristics relating to temperature, resources and atmospheric gases, and also act like their own simulations, with populations of species defined per patch.

When enough resources have been gathered to reproduce, the player cell is then taken to an "evolution" screen. Here, they can view the history of all life on the planet, migrate the player cell to new patches (and thus spreading the species), and edit their cell. Players are always given a set amount of mutation points, which are used to add, delete and move parts on the cell. Players can also customize the color of their cell, change the membrane type, and modify the behavior of non-player controlled members of the species. Many cell parts are locked until the player evolves a nucleus, thus becoming Eukaryotic.

The Evolution screen in Thrive, where the player can modify their cell.

One of the game's main features is its simulation of natural selection, called "Auto-Evo". Every 'generation', or time the player evolves, some offspring of all reproducing species is randomly 'mutated' using the same editor used by the player. Several mutations are created at once, and then tested by the game for survivability. The most capable potential cells turn into new species, which can be encountered in the game world. Because the only species and life form at the start of the game is the player's cell, this means that all species in the game world are distantly related to one another. The game also runs simulations between evolutions, which calculates the change in population for all existing species based on their characteristics, and the chance of members of a species moving to a new patch. The simulation also factors the performance of the player ingame - for instance, killing a certain species more frequently ingame decreases its overall number substantially. By late-game, the game's world is a rich and expansive simulated ecosystem, with cells specialized into similar roles as Earth's biological history.

With the right evolution, players can also bind with other cells of the same species in miniature multi-cellular formations. According to the developers, this feature will eventually serve as the transition to the next "stage" of the game. ^[3]

Development

Development of Thrive is considered to have begun in 2009, when fake screenshots of a game supposedly titled Evolutions! were posted to the Spore Forums by a user called "Hirnsausen", depicting a game much like Spore, but with a more scientific focus. ^{[4] [5]} While the screenshots turned out to be a hoax, "Hirnsausen" revealed that he wanted Maxis, the developer of Spore, to believe that they had competition in an effort to improve the quality of the game. Many users shared this sentiment, particularly due to controversies over Spore's scientific accuracy, which resulted from splits in Maxis between developers who supported a more scientific game concept, and those who wanted a more "cute" and intuitive game. ^[6]

Users began to thus plan and work on the development of a real game titled Evolutions!, which was eventually changed to Thrive. In the early years of the project, the game was mostly speculative due to a lack of programmers, artists and other necessary developers to realize the project. Many early contributors went on to leave, as they believed the project would be impossible to realize due to its scope, as well as poor organization of the very few developers that did exist. Nevertheless, the project would go through various waves of popularity online, attracting new developers.

As the initial prototypes of the game were being developed in the early 2010s, it became clear that the initial vision for the game was too grand. Development was restricted to just the Microbe Stage - a parallel of Spore's Cell Stage, and many mechanics were changed to make the game more distinct and fit the vision of the new development team. By 2015, work on the game increased thanks to more programmers, new forums and a Slack channel for developers, which contributed to a renewal of interest in the project.

In 2017, the game was moved from a custom engine to the Godot engine, and in 2021, Revolutionary Games Studio was officially registered in Finland by the developers working on Thrive. ^[7] This allowed development to move at a substantially faster rate than before, and an Early Access version was published onto Steam and Itch.io by the end of 2021. Thanks to a Patreon page, as well as sales on Steam and Itch.io, Revolutionary Games was able to pay some of its developers part-time.

References

1. "Progress Update 11/6/2021". Revolutionary Games Studio. November 6, 2021. Retrieved October 16, 2022.
2. "Revolutionary Games Studio's official website" . Retrieved October 16, 2022.
3. "Microbe Stage". Revolutionary Games Studio. Retrieved October 16, 2022.
4. "Project History". Revolutionary Games Studio. Retrieved October 16, 2022.
5. "Evolutions! - Similar to Spore!". Spore Forums. January 6, 2009.
6. "Will Wright on Spore: Cute vs. Science". Time (magazine). September 5, 2008. Retrieved October 16, 2022.
7. "Revolutionary Games Studio is now an association". Thrive Development Forums. February 2021. Retrieved October 16, 2022.