Progress Update 7/25/2026

Hello and welcome to your weekly Thrive Progress Update! With most of the vacation catching up done last week, progress on the roadmap is picking up again.

The first major point on the roadmap is that cell membrane types are now uniform across all cells in a Multicellular Stage species. You can still switch membrane types, but this will switch all cells over at once, and cost you 100MP. The current plan is to completely disable this switching of membrane types in the Macroscopic Stage. Of course, this does unfortunately remove the current gameplay expression of using different membrane types in different parts of your species, for example creating a “mouth” out of normal membrane cells, with tough cell walls elsewhere. However, we do believe this is worth it for several connected reasons.

• First up is the realism perspective. You, (presumably) animal individual reading this have the real life equivalent of a Normal membrane around all of your cells. Similarly, the grass and trees outside all have Cellulose cell walls and the fungi hopefully not growing in your fridge all have Chitin Cell walls. All Multicellular life we know is very consistent in this, and without this restriction essentially no life in Thrive would follow this.
• Connected to this are the biological differences between these groups that we also want to express in gameplay. For example, animals have highly flexible tissues that can build muscles while plants can efficiently stand up straight using water pressure even without bones (or wood). And while real Multicellular life using mineral cell walls does not exist on Earth, if it did it would look more like living rock than anything else. We want to have these recognizable and fun to play with, which is difficult if all life has a mix of membrane types.
• Finally, the aforementioned groups of animals, plants and fungi, each defined in part by their membrane types, are this way because they descend from a common ancestor that had this membrane type. This way, their origin is forever visible in how they look and the landscape they form. We believe this is also an important part of the story of life that we want to represent in Thrive. What will your world look like, if plants never evolve, and the photosynthetic lifeforms are flesh sponges or living rocks? Or a world where the “animals” have cell walls and move like walking trees?

Secondly, the endosymbiosis system is now also available in the Multicellular Stage! This means you can still convert engulfed microbes into advanced organelles after leaving the Microbe Stage. In fact, since you gain progress for each one of your cells that engulfs an endosymbiosis target, you can even do it faster than before!

We also had another new release of the Thrive Launcher this week, as last week's update included a change that unfortunately led to Windows branding Thrive as malware. That obviously led to some issues for people trying to play the game, so time was set aside to rework the code into a different format that no longer gets declared an evil virus.

Look below for some additional details and we'll see you next week for another Progress Update!

Programming

• New Devbuild available to our Patreon Supporters:
  • Changing membrane in multicellular now costs 100 MP and makes all cell types switch to the new membrane type at once
  • Enabled endosymbiosis for multicellular
  • Changing membrane types is now prevented in macroscopic
  • Added an extra explanation in the oxygen tolerance slider tooltip that organelles are needed to get higher level of adaptation
  • Updated text for achievements error popup to clarify deleting the file will only reset all achievements rather than also game saves
  • Added a code safety check before resetting intercellular matrix data on colony disband
  • Updated code checking tools
  • Updated translations

Graphics

• Nothing substantial.

Gameplay

• Cell membrane type is now uniform across all cell types in a Multicellular species. The membrane type can still be changed all at once for 100 MP. Future plans are for membrane type changes to be disabled in the Macroscopic Stage, with more mechanics attached to differentiate them.

• Endosymbiosis can now also be used in the Multicellular Stage. Endosymbiosis can be completed faster than in the Microbe Stage by engulfing the target species into multiple cells before heading into the editor.

Sound

• Nothing substantial.

Theory

• Nothing substantial.

Outreach

• Nothing substantial.

Other

• Nothing substantial.