Thrive

Thrive is an evolution game in which you control an organism on an alien planet, starting as the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA). You try to survive, adapt your species with mutations and spread it to outcompete other species. The simulation evolves those species through population dynamics and random mutations, while your success depends on both surviving as an individual and the changes you make in the editor.

The Microbe Stage

The Microbe Stage is the first and only complete stage. You control a single microbe or a colony of microbes bound together, swimming through a watery environment to collect resources and reproduce. After reproducing, you enter the editor to review how your species and others are faring, move to new biomes, and modify your species’ organelles, membrane, appearance, environmental tolerance and behaviour. Your goal is to evolve a nucleus and become a eukaryote, then use binding agents to form cell colonies, precursors to multicellular life.

Build a species

The editor offers over 25 parts for creating your species. Mitochondria provide power, chloroplasts let you use sunlight for food, and a pilus can stab prey. A flexible membrane helps you eat other organisms in one bite, while a tough cell wall offers protection. You can also change how your species behaves and tolerates its environment.

Survive and adapt

You gather resources from clouds and chunks, or take them from other species, while using your adaptations to avoid being eaten. You can survive through photosynthesis, turn poisonous hydrogen sulfide into sugar, burn chunks of iron, use other ways to make food, or feed on other organisms. Endosymbiosis lets you turn other species into part of yourself.

Other species evolve alongside yours, adapting to use food more efficiently, avoid predators or hunt you. Population simulation results and graphs let you review how species are doing and plan future actions.

A changing world

The world has regions with different environments, from scalding hydrothermal vents in the deep sea to freezing ice shelves at the surface. Environments can change, too: an asteroid impact or a global ice age can threaten photosynthesising bacteria.

Later stages and tools

The Multicellular Stage lets you place multiple cells and customize their types. Your species continues to interact with microbes in the familiar environment, while its new abilities and larger size let it take over the microbial world. Multicellular-specific gameplay is still limited, and further stages included in the game are mostly prototypes.

The game also includes a light interactive tutorial for learning the basics and a freebuild mode for creating experimental species without editing limits. It uses real compounds and organelles, along with parts inspired by real science.