Progress Update 10/17/2026

Hello and welcome to your weekly Thrive Progress Update! We have entered feature freeze for the release of Thrive 1.7, expected exactly one week from now. That also means we have a release candidate build for that release, that you can play early and test. If you do, please report on that thread any bugs or other problems you encounter.

We've still had some major additions to the Multicellular Stage in this week. The Actomyosin organelle has been rebalanced to be a bit more grounded. It's still quite powerful though, and a tutorial has been added to encourage you to use it. We've also had another critical box checked off in the form of 9 new Multicellular achievements you will be able to unlock. One has also been added for reaching the Macroscopic Stage. The screen for showing the requirements for doing so happens to have also had some graphical improvements.

Speaking of the Macroscopic Stage, it has also received two significant features. Firstly, there is now a system for displaying any imaginable texture on the creatures. Secondly, we've had a new tool added for more easily adjusting the position of a metaball in relation to the parent metaball it is connected to.

That's not to mention various technical changes, large and small. Meanwhile, over on the Development Forums, it was a bit more quiet due to everyone focusing on getting things ready for the release, though we did see some activity on the changing environment in the Macroscopic stages, Multicellular achievements, and organizing the creation of the 1.7 trailer. Speaking of which, if anyone has video editing skills and would like to help, we would love to hear from you!

So look below for additional details and screenshots if you're interested, test our release candidate build if you can, and we'll see you next time for the release of Thrive 1.7!

Programming

• New Devbuild available to our Patreon Supporters:
  • Non-player species can now become multicellular by themselves
  • Exiting the editor with unused cell types is now disallowed
  • Added a set of 9 achievements for the multicellular stage
  • Improved the GUI for the macroscopic requirements
  • Reworked the actomyosin to no longer impact flagella or cilia movement, instead it now acts on the base movement only
  • Added a tutorial for placing the actomyosin
  • Added an achievement for reaching macroscopic stage
  • Fixed cell duplication not giving any compounds to the daughter cell if the dividing cell had not ran processes and calculated useful compounds list
  • Added validation against special names in cell type names and a few other constraints that ensure the game shouldn't break no matter is entered as a name by the player
  • Fixed some terrain chunks using the wrong cull mode and thus drawing more geometry than intended
  • Cleaned up patch preparation, scoring, and accumulation code in auto-evo
  • Added creature skin textures for the macroscopic prototype
  • Added a metaball rotation tool to the macroscopic editor
  • Fixed cell type layout shifts causing errors when undoing actions in the macroscopic editor. This is the same fix as multicellular editor received a while ago.
  • Unified auto-evo code doing layout cloning
  • Fixed actomyosin reproduction cost not matching its hex count
  • Added a correctness change to auto-evo organelle removal in cell cell types that shouldn't have an effect on real game functionality
  • Refactored chunk compound scoring in auto-evo and added tests to ensure the behaviour of the code is the same as before
  • Removed TaskExecutor tests that expected a failure as these caused random unit testing failures
  • Created a procedure document on how to most easily fix translation conflicts
  • Updated unit test libraries
  • Updated System.IO.Hashing from 10.0.12 to 10.0.13
  • Updated AngleSharp from 1.8.4 to 1.8.5
  • Updated translations

Graphics

• Added a new icon for Macroscopic Stage achievements.
• Introduced a new system for handling Macroscopic organism textures.

Gameplay

• Added an achievement for reaching the Macroscopic Stage.
• Added 9 more achievements to the Multicellular Stage. No spoilers for you!
• The Actomyosin Organelle now only boosts the base speed and rotation of cells, rather than also boosting flagella and cilia. This makes combinations of these less likely to scale out of control. This was also done in preparation for the Axon Organelle, which has not made it in yet.
• Added a tool for rotating a metaball around its parent for the Macroscopic Editor.
• AI-controlled species can now become Multicellular! Right now every species with a Binding Agent tries this every generation, but we are planning to add restrictions and options for this.
• Game design discussions:
  • A post on the changing role of the environment in the Macroscopic Stages.
  • More decision making on Multicellular Stage achievements.

UI

• Another tutorial was added to recommend using Actomyosin.
• Visual updates to the screen for viewing requirements to progress to the Macroscopic Stage.

Sound

• Nothing substantial.

Theory

• Nothing substantial.

Outreach

• The second loading screen art contest is still ongoing. Art submissions of any level of quality or experience are welcome!

Other

• Nothing substantial.