Devblog #51: Onward to Multicellular
It's finally time for the first major update of the Multicellular Stage development process! We have a new cell specialisation feature allowing you to really take advantage of the multiple cell types you can make for your Multicellular species. Additionally, you can now control the growth order of cells, giving you far greater control over the course of life as a Multicellular organism. There are also several smaller additions and improvements to the stage, making it overall mor…
Read More →Progress Update 2/28/2026
As said last week, we delayed 1.0.1 to try to fit in a few more things, in which we succeeded. So today we are in feature freeze, and we have a release candidate build for all those interested to test before the full release next week. Of course, we want that release to be as bug-free as possible, so we appreciate any and all help!
Those particular features 1.0.1 was delayed for are environmental tolerances for Multicellular species and an entirely new UI for environmental toler…
Read More →Progress Update 2/21/2026
Originally, at this time we were supposed to be in feature freeze right now, preparing for the release of version 1.0.1. However, we decided to delay that by a week so that we will be able to squeeze in just a few more features that are very close to finished. What we have for you this week is already pretty exciting though!
First, we have what I would consider a major Multicellular Stage feature: Cell specialisation. At its basis it's pretty simple. The more of a cell that is jus…
Read More →Progress Update 2/14/2026
This week, the game code caught up to the Multicellular Stage officially not being a prototype anymore. Trying to enter it no longer warns you about it being a prototype, and instead you get that warning when trying to advance to Macroscopic. Similarly, our provisional “you won the game” message now appears when you reach 10 cells in Multicellular. There's also a more direct gameplay change: When first entering the Multicellular Stage, you now start with an actual multicellular organism…
Read More →Progress Update 2/07/2026
This was a busy week behind the scenes, but once again not as many patch notes on the list. A lot of work went into performance improvements for the compound cloud system, which had become slower after last week's fix to the “harsh lines” problem. But the result is that it now actually runs slightly faster than before that fix. There was also a significant delay due to technical difficulties with our lead programmer's computer.
There were still some notable fixes, for example a very…
Read More →Progress Update 1/31/2026
A somewhat quieter week this time, as more technical work is taking place. The game was updated to Godot 4.6, as fortunately this version this did not cause unacceptable problems (4.5.1 was skipped). And perhaps most noticeably, an ancient bug was fixed that caused compound clouds to form ugly straight lines, particularly when pushed by currents. This required fixing some very old and poorly understood code through methods best described as “black magic”.
For the Multicellular Stage…
Read More →Progress Update 1/24/2026
Quite a few changes went into the game this week, as can be seen from the substantial list of patch notes. Some of those are still holdovers from the holiday, but the extra good news is that this list is now finished, which means our lead developer can get started on new Multicellular features from next week.
Besides a variety of fixes (particularly to the Multicellular Stage), a rebalance and expansion to auto-evo was made, the details of which can be found below. This unfortun…
Read More →Progress Update 1/17/2026
Welcome everyone, to an uncommonly varied Progress Update. We've got everything from Multicellular fixes and design discussion to a community art contest and a very exciting video project from our community. So make sure to read to the end!
This week our main programmer has still mainly been catching up on bug reports from over the holidays, and volunteer contributions during that period. That is obviously delaying forward development, but does also mean that some of those things di…
Read More →Progress Update 1/10/2026
Welcome everyone to the first non-holiday Progress Update of the year! Our lead Programmer returned from vacation during the week, which means development will be heating up again. Having said that, a lot of time this week went into catching up on things that happened over the holiday: bug reports, messages, checking and approving volunteer contributions, etc.
Some of those volunteer contributions did make it into the game this week.On the Multicellular front, you can now determine …
Read More →Progress Update 1/03/2026
Welcome everyone to the first Progress Update of 2026! Speaking of which, Thrive is currently still on the Steam winter sale. Our lead programmer has not yet returned from vacation, so just like last week there has not been as much progress.
Volunteers have also been less active on our Github this week. Work is still going on for some of the pull requests mentioned last week. In new material, bigger snowflakes are being added to ice patches. Meanwhile, on the developer f…
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