Thrive is an open source life simulation god game developed by Revolutionary Games Studio. The game was published on Steam on November 26, 2021, and is available on Microsoft Windows, MacOS and Linux. The game has been available as a free download from its official website since 2013, although a paid version can be bought on Steam to support the developers. "Thrive" takes significant influence from "Spore", being similar in gameplay, and connected through development history. The current version of "Thrive" is 0.8.2.1.
Gameplay.
"Thrive" allows players to play as a species from its earliest form as a microscopic organism as it develops into a more complex lifeform, eventually progressing into primitive society and then civilization. The game is divided into several stages, each of them representing a different time period of the species' evolution into sentience. There are 9 different stages planned, including the Microbe Stage, Multicellular Stage, Macroscopic Stage, Aware Stage, Awakening Stage, Society Stage, Industrial Stage, Space Stage and the Ascension Stage. Of all 9 stages, only the Microbe Stage is in a fully playable capacity, while the others are still in development.
In the first stage of the game, the player plays as a microbe, who must collect various chemical compounds in order to function. The game allows the player to edit their species, adding new organelles or changing living conditions, which unlocks more opportunities for the player to explore the world through increasing the ability of the species to synthesize needed compounds like glucose. The game tracks various environmental parameters, such as oxygen or temperature levels, which affect the functions of the microbe. If the player should find themselves in conditions unsuitable for the organism, like extreme temperatures or pressure, their creature will die unless adaptations are made through an in-game editor.
The second stage, the Multicellular Stage, is still in development, but has a working prototype which can be played after finishing the first stage. The player controls a growing colony of connected cells forming a single organism. The gameplay is largely similar to that of the Microbe stage, with the primary difference being the task of managing multiple cell types in a single colony.
Development.
The idea of creating "Thrive" was born in 2008, with the release of a life simulation game known as Spore. During the development of Spore, many expected the gameplay on release to be more realistic and “scientifically accurate", and were disappointed with the final product taking a more marketable and family-friendly approach. In 2009, a user on a forum dedicated to Spore posted screenshots of a project called "Evolutions!", claiming it was a Spore-like game being developed by students at Berlin University which took the more "realistic" angle that Spore players had expected. After some time, progress on "Evolutions!" began to slow to a halt, resulting in some users starting development of their own game, which, after a vote, was named "Thrive" in 2010. Similar to "Evolutions!", "Thrive" was intended to play like a more realistic and biology-oriented version of Spore. Development began in 2011 as a small group of programmers formed, making steady progress until 2013, after which all of the original developers abandoned the project, leaving only the first release of the game which was marked as version 0.2.1. By that time, the forum for "Thrive" was "a hub of speculation and baseless ideas", and the project suffered a lack of skilled enthusiasts willing to actively develop the game. However, in 2014, "Thrive" forums received a large influx of new users resulting from the interest of past Spore players looking to find an "alternative" game. Several programmers joined the development team, keeping the project moving forward in development at a slow pace. In 2015 and 2016, new development and community forums were launched, alongside with the release of a new version of "Thrive" marked as 0.3.0.
In 2017, after multiple years of struggling to find a satisfactory game engine, "Thrive"'s developers selected Godot, on which the game is currently being developed. In 2020, the project faced financial struggles, ultimately leading to Revolutionary Games Studio being officially registered as an association in Finland. In 2021, "Thrive" was released on Steam in early access, resulting in a new wave of popularity on YouTube. By the end of 2025, the team is planning to complete development of the Microbe Stage with the release of version 1.0.0, and proceed with development of the Multicellular Stage.