Yes. I put quotations around the word “Aware” to mean the stage that comes after Multicellular for plants. Perhaps, Vascular or Sporing Stage are more appropriate terms. It very much depends on what kind of gameplay plants and other immotile organisms will have after Multicellular.
I kinda doubt that there is enough distinction and interest to warrant having a followup stage to multicellular specifically for plants. I could be proven wrong, though.
I mean, its hard to compare plants and animals because they are so different.
One must think of a plant not as a single organism, but almost as a colony of cells. Of course, you could argue that all multicellular organisms are just colonies, but the aware ones (complex animals) enter the aware stage, and the unaware ones (simpler animals, plants, fungi) remain in the multicellular stage because they simply lack the intelligence to move on through the rest of the stages.
Multicellular stage is about Cellular Differentiation.
in this stage,my ideas:
Mitosis
Player first gain a new function call Mitosis ,they will get a copy and stick with others.
(In EDITOR still edit one and all get the same content )
Cell Differentiation
After own 10 cells, player gain a new function call Cell Differentiation.
Old EDITOR will change to new design. Each block represent one cell.
In this New Editor, they can reconstruct and add new functions to one cell and save a name for this function cell,
replace it to the block that player want to change. Like specialized for digestive cell.
Mitosis still can use, but choose one block to get multiply. that cell block will be x2-x4-x8, it will become powerful.
The Multicellular organism will become lager, others become smaller(or same because they envolve the same speed as the player)
Mutation
If player don’t know how to create a proper cell. they can do mutation to gain a random cell.
Feature achievement
After gain different “factor” in function cells which the next stage must have.[animal][plant][fungi].
Player can choose one to envolve.
Multicellular stage need to be 2D, because in Multicellular stage still have many details in the cell keep changing.
when up to the next stage, that should be 3D.
[animal] must have
** digestive system**
-Hydrogen potassium ATPase(to create Gastric acid)
-Exocrine gland(to have Digestive enzyme)
esc…
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This is pretty close to what we have been thinking. It’s not set in stone or anything but this is what is in my head.
At the end of the microbe stage you’ll be able to make multicellular creatures with many copies of the same cell.
Then you will have the chance to specialise those cells into maybe 6 different types, each one will have some tradeoff. For example with muscle cells you can choose to have lots of fibers but few fat vacuoles (or whatever), so you get great speed but poor stamina, or the opposite or something in between. Same with bones, do you choose density + strength vs weight? So at the beginning you are still editing your cells as well as editing your creature.
Then when you move to being a larger, 3d, organism your cell choices still matter and maybe you should have some small ability to alter your cellular choices (though it is limited). Mostly you are working in a 3d editor just placing bones + organs etc.
I think this would be a cool system as it would mean when you have gene editing you can pick up a creature and edit it’s cells to give it different properties, like more stamina or something.
I don’t know what well end up making though 
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I thought that multicellular stage was all about living as simple multicellular colony later evolving into other kinds of tissue allowing the formation of more complex organisms, not playing as an entire animal or plant. Playing as an animal-like creature would be in Aware stage, because that kind of organism is far more complex and has many kinds of tissue.
"the first multicellular organisms were simple, soft organisms lacking bone, shell or other hard body parts, […]
Symbiotic theory
This theory suggests that the first multicellular organisms occurred from symbiosis (cooperation) of different species of single-cell organisms, each with different roles. Over time these organisms would become so dependent on each other they would not be able to survive independently, eventually leading to the incorporation of their genomes into one multicellular organism.[31] Each respective organism would become a separate lineage of differentiated cells within the newly created species."
There’s other theories, but you can read them on your own, I put the link above.
I’ve always thought of multicellular as the “bridge” between microbe and aware. Early MC is like Microbe, except for the fact that your creature now consists of multiple cells instead of just a clump. Later on, you would unlock the ability to distinguish cells, and even later you’ll get the ability to place multiple cells at the same time instead of each one separately. This will then later turn into the ability to place entire tissues, at which point the player starts the Aware stage.
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I think personally the stages as currently set out don’t make a huge amount of sense as a way to cut the game up, I think really there’s 3 phases.
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2d top down microbes. You play as a single cell or a cluster of cells or an early multicellular blob, as you are talking about, but even then you mostly deal with other single cells.
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3d Creature phase. You use a 3D editor to make a 3D creature which starts off as a tiny worm like thing and then goes all the way to a complex tribe with tools etc.
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Strategy Phase. You control a whole civilisation in a top down strategy mode. This goes all the way through from a single town to a galactic civilisation.
I think those are the main shifts. I think there won’t really be any noticable boundaries inside these phases, I guess maybe industrial to space your map will shift / unlock the ability to view the solar system you are in. Or maybe a tool editor will unlock late on in the creature phase.
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Well, switching from only placing organelles to actually adding additional cells to an organism in the 2d editor would still qualify as a noticeable shift, wouldn’t it?
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Well, then this starts going back into the territory of not having stages at all, just progress. (which im all for, by the way)
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I’d rather put stages because each one ends when the player has unlocked a new ability of great importance (formed a cell colony, developped a nervous system [and a sexual system as well], grow and evolve as a primate [“Monkey”, your creature that is to become sentient; you must discover how to use fire, cook your meat, use tools, form a group with other members of your own species, etc.], grow your “tribe” [hunt, gather, scavenge 
, invent writing{which is one of the most important things to do by the way}, create your own culture, work metal, etc.], then grow your civ. and mostly unify the planet and finally explore and colonize other planets and natural satellites). I don’t know gentlemen, but I would feel better if everything would be divided into stages, steps.
, invent writing{which is one of the most important things to do by the way}, create your own culture, work metal, etc.], then grow your civ. and mostly unify the planet and finally explore and colonize other planets and natural satellites). I don’t know gentlemen, but I would feel better if everything would be divided into stages, steps.Let’s talk about getting from microbe stage to multicellular. How exactly is this transition going to look? I think binding agents were mentioned, but still - how do you get them? What are the demands for unlocking/evolving them? Do you have to produce certain amount of ATP? Do you have to “collect” it? I cannot really imagine the transition, let alone imagine how to do it well.
I think this is pretty important step, might be the most important step in the development of Thrive so far, as it is the very first noticeable shift in the gameplay, but no one is really talking about it. I know we will still be polishing the microbe stage for quite some time, but the multicellular is getting closer every day and we should have at least a rough idea about how to do the transition.
Unrelated question - are the individual cells going to have individual HP, or will it be viewed as one organism’s HP already? If the HP’s going to be individual, what happens if only one cell dies? Will it be replaced?
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I think, in a very rough outline, it goes:
Late Microbial: 2D
Early Multicellular: 2D
Mid Multicellular : 2.5D
Late Multicellular: 3D
Early Aware: 3D
I was more talking about the act of binding cells together rather than the visual/controls shift. Like… How are you gonna get the ability to bind cells together?
Oh, sorry. I think something would eventually happen where you evolve binding agents, and then one of your cells improperly multiply, causing them to stick together. Boom. Multicellular. For the first while, you can only have one basic type of cell, until later on, when you can have different kinds doing different things!
Cannot wait for that! But the main goal of the first question was to find out if anyone has an idea on how would you evolve the given agents. What would be the necessary steps in order to get it? Would you just be able to buy it for 100MP? Do you have to find it somewhere floating around and engulf it? Is it random (I hope not, I don’t like random events in games, ew)? That was the main question. Basically “La-la-la, I’m a big cell now, how to become multicellular?”
How would that work? Usually 2.5D is characterized by having a camera tilted down 45 degrees and 2D sprites that are drawn to have perspective. We use full 3D. And I don’t think it would look good to have the camera not be top down before fully unlocking looking in any direction.
There were discussions recently on the dev discord about how the player would unlock organelles. Similar thing would probably apply to binding agents.
My idea is that after evolving binding agents you aren’t any more multicellular than before. Instead the player would swim around like normal but they would be able to to enter “bind” mode where if they touch another cell of their species it would attach. The player would still split normally. Then after they have some critical number of cells in their clump when they divide the player would be given the multicellular editor where they place specialized cells. And now while swimming around the player splitting would fill out their species template instead of going to the editor immediately.
Once there were hundreds of cells (or maybe less, we might hit performance problems before that) the individual cells would stop rendering and the player would then be placing tissue instead of individual cells.
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I meant 2.5D as in progressively more 3D until it is a fully 3D environment. Right now in the microbe stage, it’s very much 2D. Sure it might have 3D graphics, but it still operates on a 2D plane.
Interesting. How do you imagine that that would work?
Well, maybe add perspective…
The current camera seems orthographic, showing every entity as if it were top down. Perhaps at a certain point, perspective could be incorporated to give it that depth.