Hey everyone! I go by Deus, and I am the game design team lead for Thrive. We wanted to share our little project with you guys.
Thrive is an open-sourced game which simulates the evolution of life in a scientifically-accurate manner. Players take control of a unicellular lifeform, and navigate their organism through the challenges of a young planet. Players are able to evolve unique metabolisms, acquire the ability to emit toxic agents, and manage their organism’s growth as they compete against other lifeforms and a world which evolves with them.
We are currently approaching a major milestone – the feature completion of our first stage, the Microbe Stage. By the start of 2026, we will work on the next stage of Thrive, which will represent the first steps of multicellular life. Future development will focus on the evolution of larger animals, in a fully-3D, dynamic world. And, eventually, we would like to represent the evolution of these organisms into social networks, societies, civilizations, and ultimately, spacefaring empires.
We wanted to share our project with Godot and its community members, as we felt that our story is reflective of the principles which Godot embodies – primarily, its foundation as an open-sourced/accessible nature, and volunteer-driven development team facing an incredible scope. Thrive has had a long history – conceptualized since 2010, developed through volunteer effort since 2011, and then, developed by a full-time programmer since 2022.
There were many periods in which the completion of even our first stage looked questionable given the pace of volunteer contributions. However, the valiant effort of dozens of volunteers and our beloved community pushed the game forward – to a point where one of our programmers established a non-profit organization in Finland, and has been working full-time on our project. With this quickened pace of development, we have been able to achieve goals which looked impossible even 5 years ago.
Check out the trailer for our most recent release, version 0.9.1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxsR-WcbYoI
Our Steam Page: Thrive on Steam
We welcome you to check out our GitHub page as well. Though we accept purchases on Steam, players can download the game for free via GitHub. Every inch of our project is accessible and open-sourced: GitHub - Revolutionary-Games/Thrive: The main repository for the development of the evolution game Thrive.
Our development forums are open for view as well: https://forum.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/
Our community forums: https://community.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/
Enjoy some more screenshots, including visuals of the current stage and a picture of our playable multicellular prototypes!
