Open source evolution game Thrive adds part upgrades and a benchmark mode

Benchmark the cells! Evolve all the things! Thrive 0.6.1 is a fun sounding upgrade to this free and open source scientific evolution sim.

One of the big new features is the ability to actually upgrade parts. While it's early days for the feature with only one part able to use it, they can and will be expanding it across many other parts included in the game. The idea is to give you a bit more freedom in how you play it. Right now you can upgrade the Cilia to pull things in from a distance and the more you have the stronger the pull.

There's also the new Benchmark mode to see how your PC will run it over time, which also gives the developers a good way to keep an eye on what they need to optimize in it. 

Some of the other changes include:

• Patch notes are now shown in the main menu first time when playing a new Thrive version.
• Added buttons in main menu and the pause menu to open the link for reporting bugs.
• Added new auto-evo exploring tool features (exporting data, running multiple worlds in a row + others).
• Evolutionary tree now works for freebuild games started with a fossil.
• Added day/night cycle tutorial.
• It is now possible to rebind and see controller buttons in the options menu.

It's becoming quite an impressive game, while a little difficult to get into at the start they've done a pretty good job on expanding the tutorial to give you a good idea on what to do and how to survive. I don't seem to be dying as early and often as I was a few versions ago.

See their new release trailer:

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You can buy it on Steam to support development or download it direct or via Flathub.