itch.io

Hi again.

1) As I said, the many of the game's strings are defined outside of json files, within the game's source code, and some of those are manipulated or assembled programmatically at runtime (some words are generated by code) based on English-specific rules. I would need to do a non-trivial amount of work to prepare the game for proper localisation efforts. Most notably, if I were to localise the game, I would prefer to not have duplicates of json files - those represent game logic/content, and having multiple copies floating around would make it harder to maintain the game/represent a large surface area for unwanted bugs to creep in, both of which would make it harder to do the kind of quick small patches I've been doing for the past several years.

I do not know of a tool for extracting contents from .pck files.

2) Hive Time is not under active development. I usually do a small patch to celebrate the game's release anniversary and World Bee Day (though I skipped this year). Broadly, Hive Time is the game we intended to make, but you can read about some of the original post-release update plans here if you're interested.

3) Being pay-what-you-want is part of Hive Time's identity. Even if I was comfortable selling it at a fixed price as a way of introducing broader audiences to that, the Steam Distribution Agreement forbids developers from mentioning other storefronts (some developers get away with ignoring this, but I've personally had Valve reject a demo for mentioning that the full game was available on Steam and Itch, and besides, why would I want my work to be on a platform if I have to break their rules to be there?).

If Itch required an account to buy and play Hive Time, I could understand some players being averse to it, but I've never found anybody who was interested in the game and would have preferred to play it on Steam who didn't end up downloading it from Itch. From my experiences with the games I've worked on that are on Steam, I think it's important to note that just being there doesn't guarantee you an audience or an income - that may have been the case 15 years ago, but it hasn't been that way in a long, long time.