video game? or cell simulator?

[rchc]

This "game" feels like a biology nerd that figured out how to make games had a fever dream.
It has alot of technical information, that I don't have time to go to wikipedia and/or watch university lectures just to figure out.

It's KIND OF like Spore, in a sense. But I'm sure this game would make alot more sense if I actually wanted to learn alot of biology, which I don't

[Boost]

The primary reason Thrive development began was that there were a lot of people who were unhappy with how the the release version Spore felt like a simplified version of what has promised. So the primary goal of Thrive was to do a scientifically accurate version of Spore. That is still pretty much the goal of Thrive but now it would be more accurate to word it like Thrive is an evolution simulation game. Unlike a pure evolution simulator, playability and a fun playing experience is a major goal for us. Also being an educational game has snuck up as a goal on the game. For that and scientific accuracy reason we use real units of measurement wherever possible and real-life terms and organelle etc. names to be scientific feeling and educational.

If Thrive was reskinned as like a scifi robot building game and we replaced all the biology terms with made up scifi-sounding words, the gameplay and learnability would still be the same in my opinion. For example instead of lysosome a part could be called "phase discriminating amplifier." So in my opinion the real-life science terms don't require actually knowing them beforehand or wanting the learn them to be able to play Thrive as you can just think of them as random made up words we have (as the effect is the same, but with the real science terms some players will already know them).

Just recently there was a negative review on Thrive comparing it to being just a roguelike and not an evolution simulator. I know we can't please everyone but I think we have about the right balance of game playability to simulation aspects right now. The core gameplay loop does look quite a bit like a roguelike or a factory management game, but we also have a lot of simulation aspects thanks to all the AI cells being evolution algorithm driven and also the species (including the player) having simulated impact on the world and each other. Finally I guess I should admit that our tutorial could be improved (and there's plans to do so before consider the microbe stage complete) so that getting into the game is easier. Though the philosophy behind our main tutorial is that it lets the player discover things themselves and is not like a mobile game handholding-hell kind of tutorial.

[Sir Twist]

Well, I can say for myself at least, I appreciate the use of the real? terms for the various parts. Nothing better then actually learning something while playing a fun game. AS Boost says. they COULD change the names but what real difference would that make to the way the game plays? I can't wait to see what comes of this project.

[Kai Ning]

I haven't played it yet, but the only reason i bought it it was because it use real term and try to be grounded in science, i.e., in reality.

I almost didn't got it since it's in E.A.

But since the whole project is to have a couple games stacked on top of each other, i guess i'll consider the game "temporarily finished" and ready to play once the microbe phase will be "over" and you'll move out to the next.

I wonder if there was discussion during development to release each part as independant game then releasing a "final version" down the line combining all of them, purely for marketing perspective. Creating a user base, solidifying it, havint it hype the thing and snowballing it into a bigger thing through media hype.

[Boost]

Releasing each stage separately and asking people to pay for each one (which I assume was meant here) would feel like nickel-and-diming the players for each huge update. So we are not doing that in order to keep the promise that if you purchase the game just once, you get all the updates and the finished game if we manage to get there at some point (this depends on future sales now and other continued support). As for marketing it would be harder to get 7 indie games to sell (without branding them as part of a series) than just one. We can already do a marketing move like giving a special subtitle to like the multicellular stage and advertise that separately. We just don't have any real marketing resources to use in the first place. Also separate games would need to be basically made from the start to be meant to be combined into one, otherwise at the end we'd either need to remake all the games into one or just forever leave them feeling like a loose collection of games.

So in summary I don't think it would help the overall goal of sometime in the future having a completed version of Thrive. And hopefully enough people will consider continued support of Thrive even without us forcing people to pay for each major stage update separately.

As a final thought I'll mention that like 3+ years ago I remember seeing a reddit post about someone trying to start a project to remake Spore as a group of separate games (so exactly the idea of making Thrive but as separate games). I don't have a link on hand but I think that effort completely failed without producing anything concrete. So I kind of think that the idea of trying to make like 5+ games at once with a team without funding, is even more doomed to fail than the model we picked for Thrive (making just a single stage at once and ensuring the stages link together from the start).

[J]

how far is the game now? Creatures? Civilizations? Space?

[Boost]

The microbe stage is nearing completing as per our roadmap: https://wiki.revolutionarygamesstudio.com/wiki/Release_Roadmap We have prototypes for all of the stages all the way until the end of the game in ascension stage, though after early multicellular the prototypes get more and more basic.

[ThatZenoGuy]

The game doesn't really know what direction it's supposed to be going. It has crazy stuff like cells altering the atmospheric content of the planet as a whole. But on the flipside 'realistic' stuff like Stentors aren't possible to make.

[Boost]

Right now on Earth a significant fraction of oxygen is produced by microscopic life. For example here's a source for bacteria producing 20% of all biosphere oxygen: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-oxygen.html so I think it is very scientifically accurate that microbes when given 100 million years can significantly affect a planet's atmospheric composition.

[Sir Twist]

Yeah. its pretty neat, from what I've heard, algies and such grew in such numbers due to the massive CO2 in the atmosphere, and then because of all the plants, the O2 levels raised and gave way to all the massive insects and such as giant centipedes. Our atmosphere is not as stable as some folks wish to believe..

[ThatZenoGuy]

Originally posted by Boost:

Right now on Earth a significant fraction of oxygen is produced by microscopic life. For example here's a source for bacteria producing 20% of all biosphere oxygen: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-oxygen.html so I think it is very scientifically accurate that microbes when given 100 million years can significantly affect a planet's atmospheric composition.

Oh no, make no mistake it's entirely realistic. But it also appears overly complicated to put in a game.
Imagine you get to animal stage but cells already existing in the water change the atmosphere (again) and now you've got hardlocked out of the game.

[Boost]

We are trying very hard to hit the right balance between simulation and gameplay. I think we are about at the right level right now as there's very few comments either way (asking for less simulation or asking for much more details). For example right now on our community forums there's one person asking us to add like 4 new features for the microbe reproduction mechanic to make it more complex (but more realistic). I think we are unlikely to add those suggestions as I think we are just about at the right balance of realism without scaring away majority of the players with the complexity.

[Ζiоqch]

Having more cell simulators would be nice. The only ones I remember are flash with Cellcraft and that one ♥♥♥♥♥♥ one where slowing down Sim speed was literally just causing the game to lag which could crash it.

Also for a Spore 2.0, don't bother hoping. Universim has the planet conquest and Thrive has the evolution but there's nothing out there that comes close to Spore's general feeling, let alone the "Perfect Spore" that inspires people to try to remake it.

[Sømbra]

So this game will be a more realistic version of SPORE? How many evolution phases do you plan to make?

[Boost]

All of them? From the beginning Thrive has been imagined as playing your species through all stages starting from microbial and ending as a space empire. Of course as we have an extremely small team (one paid employee and a few volunteers active at once) it will take a really long time to complete the game.

[Sømbra]

Originally posted by Boost:

All of them? From the beginning Thrive has been imagined as playing your species through all stages starting from microbial and ending as a space empire. Of course as we have an extremely small team (one paid employee and a few volunteers active at once) it will take a really long time to complete the game.

If the game will have all that phases, im really interesting to play it, i know will take time to finish it, thats not a problem for me