Thrive 0.4.0- A Very Calm And Not Angry 'Review'

Boy, oh boy. Thrive 0.4.0. The Thrive version we’ve been waiting for. Untold centuries have passed, the sands of time drifting away as the Thrive devs worked long and hard to push out this update to everyone’s favourite far-from-complete evolution simulator. As it took so, so very long to push out, and a heck of a lot of work, it’s gonna be great and wonderful and everyone is ok.

Before I begin, allow me to sum up my initial experience in a single image;
image

Yeah. You can tell how this is gonna be, can’t you?
Allow me to elaborate.

initial experiences
When I first booted up this crown jewel upon the grand, golden king-tiara of the evolution simulator niche of gaming, I was treat to the new dna-intro-thingy. Looks great, save for the shakiness. Then there was the main menu. Ah. same as always.

I then started a new game, as any sane gamer would, should they not have an option panel. I was treat to Quantum’s cutscene. I tried to skip it. The game nearly crashed. Except it didn’t. It was generating. ohoho.
Got into the game, playing as my little dinky microbe. Gameplay lasted a whole 3 minutes, as thrive proceeded to feel like crashing. That’s not even the best part. The Launcher crashed. I couldn’t find the launcher. I redownloaded the launcher. :^)

Launcher proceeded to comaplin about the fact there was a missing Thrive executable- image
I did as instructed (delete a folder), and told the launcher to redownload thrive 0.4.0.
Same error again. hm.
The folder had redownloaded itself. Ok. I deleted it again.
It redownloads itself again. This process goes on for 5 minutes.

Eventually, I can play thrive again. Yay.

gameplay

Oh, forgot to mention- can’t see any chemical clouds. That was fun until I realised that the box was telling me that stuff was there. I do like the “flail your mouse around to see where chemicals are” mechanic. It really adds to the experience.

So, because of my crippling predicament, I decided to bully bacteria instead. by eating them. Eating is a form of bullying, I swear it. Do things enjoy being eaten? Most of the time, no. Most of the time.

By some miracle of christ himself, I finally get access to the editor. I see a whole new range of funky organelles. I add chloroplasts.

Unfortunately, the game does not inform me of light level as far as I can tell, so that was a waste of mp.

After another cycle of bacteria-bullying, I go back into the editor. I get flagella. I proceed to die twice and spend 5 minutes accumulating ATP.

I go back into the editor again, and add an organelle I haven’t even heard of before, nor can I remember the name. Must be that non-lawk.

I die again, and get sick of the game.

summary of pros and cons compared to previous version

+Colour
+Species names exist
+I can eat bacteria for cheap atp
+Cool cutscenes
+I assume the graphics are slightly better
+3 D. O X Y T O X Y.

-Missing clouds is a bug. unsurprising in hindsight
-Chemical clouds not that worth it anyway when you can just eat bacteria
-Launcher is cool and good
-Cutscene skipping is cool and good
-Bringing up the menu doesn’t pause the game. :^)
-Good variety of organelles, unclear worth of said organelles

Overall? meh. not exactly terrible, but definitely not great. unclear if experience has improved at all.

Take my words with a pinch of salt. I tend to be a bit blind to good aspects.

Edit- Yeah, it also likes to crash. No improvement there.

2 Likes

Light level doesn’t impact chloroplast function right now works the same regardless so not a waste , when you started the game it wasn’t crashing it takes some time to gen the world and the cells. Also there. Tooltips and help menu in the editor that tells you what organelles do.

1 Like

hm.

I tend to take those “ree this app is crashing” alerts too seriously.

Also all the ones in game right now except the chemoplast are real. Also look at the help menu, did I mention you should maybe look at the help menu?

About the crashes in our tests it wasn’t crashing at all so imagine my irritation when the release build crashes.

I looked at the help menu.

I proceeded to take a minute to get out of it, as the scroll bar would just go back up to the top. Probably my fault.

You should be able to scroll it like a webpage scroll bar.

Also the clouds not appearing is obviously a bug.

Oh, I’d assumed it was a feature

Really? Why do you think we would intentionally do that?
Can you post in bug reports with your computer specs please.

Because in all 4 sessions of me playing the game (of which I have reinstalled at least oncce), I did not see a single damn cloud.

You should have seen in the release trailer, in screen shots I posted in every single piece of media that we posted that clouds show up. It’s your graphics card messing up. The help menu even tells compound colors and talks about clouds. I’m sorry you had this issue but know it’s a bug. So if you could post in bug reports with your specs it’d be useful.
:slight_smile:

3 Likes

i too, also think that this game is fucking bullshit and needs a re-work.

  1. You are posting on a thread that is 2 years old, and isn’t relevant anymore
  2. Your post is quite useless, considering that you aren’t making suggestions- you are just saying that thrive is bad with no feedback
  3. IF you are being sarcastic, you need to point it out because sarcasm doesn’t show on the internet very well
  4. No one else in this thread said thrive was a horrible game, so why are you saying that you agree with someone?
4 Likes

oh wow, imagine not giving proper criticism and commenting on a 2 YEAR OLD REVIEW OF AN OLD VERSION OF THE GAME AND CALLING THE GAME TRASH

1 Like

OoferDoofer’s post sums up my opinion about your post pretty well though I am interested in what you have to say about what changes Thrive needs to make