Viable Achievements

Narotiza · June 9, 2017, 1:52am

I created an Achievements thread on the community forum about a year ago, and it’s seen quite a lot of activity even to this day, with hundreds of replies and achievement ideas. Unfortunately… only a handful are viable, with a pretty big amount of submissions being, basically, obscure references unrelated to Thrive, often with criteria that would be impossible for the game to recognize. (for instance, creating a hexagon-shaped organism or resisting the urge to make a phallic-shaped creation). It’s starting to almost seem more like a forum game than an actual place to suggest things. hhyyrylainen even posted in there, asking for more viable achievements, and everyone ignored him.

So, I’ve decided to create a similar thread, but on here, where we can perhaps come up with more viable achievements without the clutter of unviable ones, whilst occasionally picking ones from the community thread we think might also work. I’m aware there’s already an achievement thread on here, but it’s old and was only about icons, which were also old, because I’ve adopted a more minimal, TF2-inspired style which I prefer over the old one - please share your thoughts about these. I’m mainly uncertain about the color palette.

Here are some examples of what I’d consider ‘viable:’

To start, here are some of my favorite suggestions posted by Oliver on the community thread.

Micro-Borg: Assimilate a bacterium.

Stayin’ Alive: Kill five microbes when the disco mode cheat is activated.

Mmm, Sunlight: Develop photosynthesis.

Amazingly Well Adapted: Reach the next stage with hardcore settings.

Dodo: Go extinct.

Dodon’t: Bring your species back from the brink of extinction.

Hyperspace Bypass: Destroy a planet

Artistic Licence: Complete the game with the LAWK toggle off.

Sluuuuurp: Engulf another microbe.

Sluuuuur-oh: Die while engulfing another microbe.

Living in Harmony: Listen to every piece of music in the game for at least 10 seconds in one play session.

Flagellant: Have 10 flagella on your microbe.

Plus, some by me.

Disco Fever: Complete an entire game in Disco Mode, from Microbe to Ascension.

Now what?: Get stuck in the stone age, likely due to being an aquatic organism with the inability to discover fire.

Tardigrade/Tardigreat: Create an extremophilic species in multicellular.

And some made by mitobox:

Humble Origins: Advance from Microbe to Multicellular.

Growing Pains: Advance from Multicellular to Aware.

Wake Up: Advance from Aware to Awakening.

Big Plans: Advance from Awakening to Society.

Growing Up Fast: Advance from Society to Industrial.

Left the Cradle: Advance from Industrial to Space.

To The Top: During the Space Stage, Ascend.

Pantheon: Reach Ascension as 5 different species.

Doesn’t afraid of anything: Name an organism “Thrive.”

Staring Death in the eyes: While hiding, be in close proximity to a predator without getting found for at least 30 seconds.

Now I am become death: Unlock the “nuclear warhead” function part.

(Destroyer of Worlds: Drop a nuclear weapon, causing an immense number of casualties.) - not posted by mitobox, but I thought it would fit with the one above.

Out Of Gas: During the Society Stage or above, deplete your home planet’s supply of fossil fuels.

hhyyrylainen · June 9, 2017, 4:12pm

Here’s a few more from my list:

Punctuated Equilibrium :: Enter and exit the editor without making any changes, then use up all 100 Mutation Points in your next editor session.
Huh, we didn’t think the game was this stable yet :: Play for 15 minutes without crashing.
It costs 200 thoundsund atp to swim for 12 seconds :: have over 40 flagellium
Micro-Murder :: Kill another microbe
Micro-Slaughter :: Kill ten microbes
Micro-Massacre :: Kill one hundred microbes
Live, Damn You! :: Recover from a near death exprience
I-I’m Alive? :: Survive for over an hour without dying.
Shish-Kebab :: Kill another microbe with a Predatory Pilus.
Panic! :: Go Extinct while Disco Mode is active

Some of these are pretty joke-y and the crashing hopefully doesn’t apply with ue4

But I think the survive things, kill things and tons of flagella would provide something very excited people could try to accomplish. This would give the most enthusiastic fans almost content to play.

tjwhale · June 9, 2017, 4:57pm

There are some nice suggestions here.

Personally I think it’s interesting to think about what the purpose of achievements is. They can be used to mark progress, and that is fine. I think one powerful use for them is to encourage people to explore areas of the game they might not otherwise see.

For example having an achievement for being immobile (no flagella or cillia) might get some people to realise that it is possible to play the game that way (we need to do some work on making that fun of course). That way it’s leading people to play the game in a counter intuitive and different way.

Another example might be an achievement for completing the society stage without going to war, it encourages people that there are other ways to get what you want and to really use the diplomacy system.

So for the microbe stage maybe it’s worth thinking about what the extreme forms of gameplay are and encouraging people towards them with achievements.