Progress Update 5/09/2026

Last week we told you that this week would be the last one to add new features before the next release. However, due to a scheduling conflict with when we would then have our release stream (can you guess what the conflict was with?), we decided to delay it by one week. Which happened to be quite convenient since two large features being worked on were not quite ready yet this week.

Of course, other things were ready this week. First, we added a “very easy” difficulty mode that should have people starving to death less frequently. Secondly, growth speed was significantly increased in the Multicellular Stage to make it less tedious and more fun to play through. The amount of gameplay time spent per generation was also shifted over towards playing as the fully-grown design.

On the UI side, a Thriveopedia page was added that is automatically created for every species and is opened whenever you click on a species' name in the game. Right now the information on the page is limited, but it will likely be expanded later on. We also now have some Multicellular Stage-specific loading screen tips that can show up once you reach that stage.

Meanwhile, over on the development forums things were pretty quiet, but there was a discussion on the exact implementation of the Multicellular increased growth speed mentioned earlier.

Look below for the full progress list, and we will see you next week with those last changes for the next release!

Programming

• New Devbuild available to our Patreon Supporters:
  • Improved the performance of the compound clouds by up to 100%
  • Created pages in the Thriveopedia for each species in the game and made clicking on a species take you to that page
  • Added a very easy difficulty
  • Tweaked multicellular reproduction speed
  • Fixed signalling agents staying on if they were removed in the editor
  • Adjusted lighting in the macroscopic editor
  • Added multicellular-specific tips to the loading screen
  • Screen filters now affect Godot-inbuilt popups and tooltips
  • Tweaked the cloud benchmark to ramp up the stress after a bit
  • Added exporting of overall world generation time statistics for auto-evo exploring tool
  • Made failure to emit compounds due to membrane not being ready yet not an error, and tweaked some code to retry later in that case
  • Refactored the code for the Jukebox to avoid temporary memory allocations
  • Adjusted some comments related to StrainAffected component in the code
  • Updated translations

Graphics

• Nothing substantial.

Gameplay

• Added a “very easy difficulty” preset that primarily reduces resource consumption so that it is easier to not starve. But it also further increases the MP advantage the player has over the AI.
• Tweaked (mostly increased) multicellular reproduction speed.
  • Passive Ammonia/Phosphate collection is increased per cell you currently have grown in your multicellular organism.
  • You need to collect some more of the above after being fully grown.
• Created pages in the Thriveopedia for each species in the game and made clicking on a species take you to that page.
• Game design discussions:
  • Discussion on the exact implementation of increasing growth speed in the Multicellular Stage.

Sound

• Nothing substantial.

Theory

• Nothing substantial.

Outreach

• Nothing substantial.

Other

• Added multicellular-specific loading screen tips.