itch.io

I don't think Hive Time has quite managed a million players just yet! It's on track for 100,000 downloads this year, I reckon :D

The event that triggers when the last surviving Queen dies has an "I'm having fun" option that allows you to continue playing (unless you enable the "Unforgiving game over" find-your-own-fun setting when starting a new game). It was important to me that the game didn't have any failure points, and that goals and constraints be something that players embraced or rejected based on their own interests and enjoyment. The Jelly goal also serves as a comfortable stopping point for players who aren't enjoying playing for the sake of playing, and a gateway to starting a fresh hive with all their existing research and knowledge for those who are - in my mind, that's where the true game starts.

The playspace is 2,000 cells big, minus whatever obstacles eat up. You can leave hundreds of non-upgraded cells in place and still have room to expand and build many times more upgraded cells without demolishing anything. Staying small (whether that's staying under 150 cells or staying under 75 bees) is a valid way to play and a fun way to explore some of the simulation's boundaries, but that's not intended to be a constraint.

If you skipped the tutorial and didn't review anything in the in-game Beepedia, I'm curious to know how long into your first Queen's lifespan it took you to internalise the "three bees per cell" rule that limits infrastructure use. Even though tester feedback led me to put the tutorial in (it gives guidance up to the spawning of the first Queen), my hope was that all of the game's mechanics and systems would be organically discoverable for an observant player. Each Exit cell in particular has three indicators to show how many bees are currently using it, but many players don't spot that. As a fallback, the info pop-ups for Exit cells covers it, the Beepedia surfaces it in a number of places, and the Activity screen I mentioned earlier also notes that too few Exits limits how many bees can gather resources at once (which again, can be an interesting self-driven constraint, but is not a limitation the game itself is imposing).

If you're interested in where I would have gone with future post-release development, there's a "tentative roadmap" here. It's missing a few things that I had in mind, but didn't want to set expectations for (like alt upgrades for each cell type and role advisor attachments for the Throne), but I think it gives an idea of the broad strokes that I was aiming for longer term. That said, while it has its share of rough edges as all games do, Hive Time is the game I intended to make, and I don't feel like any of the stuff on that roadmap is specifically missing.

I usually do a little patch once or twice a year in celebration of the game's birthday and World Bee Day, but in order to pay bills, my attention is elsewhere and no larger scale Hive Time development is planned at this time. As I said though, if I come up with a way of indicating currently-unlocked upgrade patterns when building cells that would scale to show multiple patterns in a clear way, I'll definitely add it in one of those smaller patches. In the meantime, costs and layouts of already-researched upgraded cells can be seen in the Beepedia.

Thanks again for your kind words. I'm glad to know that you did enjoy the game in a broad sense, and again, I'm sorry to hear that your experience felt more restrictive than what I was aiming for.

I'm sorry to hear that that was your experience of the game. It was certainly my intention to make a game that provided a more flexibility than you found. I'm not quite sure I understand since everything you've expressed frustration with is either optional to engage with or has a find-your-own-fun setting, but games are subjective, and you had the experience you had.

Just in case I've misrepresented myself, when I say that my expectation was that players would be comfortable destroying cells to make specific upgrades when needed, I'm thinking "destroy one or two cells when that's all that's in the way of making an upgrade," not "remodel the entire hive." The world is big - there's plenty of room to expand and build upgraded cells without destroying anything if a player thinks they need them (with the exception of a single upgraded Workshop, no upgraded cells are necessary for comfortably meeting the Jelly goal in time, though I'd usually recommend upgrading the Throne Room since the Activity screen can be helpful for monitoring role productivity).

To clarify, the default Queen's lifespan is 2 hours, and the cooldown before a new Queen can be spawned is 1 hour without upgrades (which was tuned to enforce a maximum concurrent Queen count since it can take much, much less than that to make the Jelly required for a new Queen). Some players have mistaken the cooldown on spawning a new Queen for the current Queen's lifespan, but when that expires it becomes apparent pretty quickly that the Queen isn't dead, and there's a warning event prior to the Queen actually dying to remind players to spawn a new Queen so they won't forget.

As I said, upgrades aren't "hidden" to create engagement - they're revealed when the player has earned them as a way of keeping things from being overwhelming in the early game first and foremost (some of this was driven by tester feedback during development), and secondarily as a new layer of construction concerns for players to consider (or ignore) for their subsequent Queens' hives. The "skip Beepedia locks" find-your-own-fun option lets players see (among other things) upgraded cell layouts in the Beepedia before they're researched, and for anybody keen to have a "second hive" type experience for a lineage's first hive, there's the "skip research" find-your-own-fun option.

From the pre-release playtesting I did, most fresh players were able to make the Jelly goal on their first attempt (even when Old Bitey paid a visit or two - he's a random disaster, and isn't guaranteed to make an appearance). Those that didn't were close, and generally chose to keep playing after their Queen died ("losing" is optional in Hive Time).

I added the "skip disasters" find-your-own-fun option in the Hiveversary Update, so Old Bitey himself is optional at this point too.

Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad to hear that overall you enjoyed the game. Most of what you've noted is by design/with intent. If it's of value or interest, I'll give some insight/reasoning below.

With regards to upgrade patterns, I specifically didn't want new players to know or care about that stuff in the early game. My expectation was that most players would be content with destroying cells and remodel their hive to make specific upgrades where needed, and then use their experience/knowledge to inform how future generations' hives would be constructed when carrying forward past hives' research. Not everybody has embraced that though - I've found that destroying/repurposing cells is something that some people seem particularly resistant to, even though only 3 of the 8 non-storage cell types need additional space to be upgraded (since all storage upgrades use the same pattern, they can be viewed as one thing, I think). If that leads those players to make drastically different decisions for the layout of their second Queen's hive though, then I'm inclined to see that as a good thing since it surfaces more of the game's underlying shape/possibility space.

The longer term plan if I had the opportunity to continue to develop the game would have involved adding more upgrade options that used different patterns, which makes me a little reluctant to show a preview of the currently implemented upgrade options in case I ever do get to realise those plans. It's not something I'm giving specific attention to at this time, but if I come up with a way of indicating currently-unlocked upgrade patterns that would scale to show multiple patterns in a clear way, I'll definitely add it in a future patch.

The general design philosophy behind the role-specific management systems is that they should offer room for micromanagement for players who are into that, but also be optional and mostly ignorable for players who don't (eg: the Beesitter tutorial image shows a set-and-forget position for the population slider that will guarantee population growth). I've had some ideas for making Foraging management a little more elaborate (and what's in the game is a step beyond ), but I'm also keen to make sure it doesn't go too far beyond the other management systems' levels of complexity (it is currently the most complex).

Hive Time is very much not about bees, but it's worth noting that real honey bee deaths frequently occur away from the hive while out foraging/pollinating. It's sad, but from what I understand, less strain on the hive than when bees can't go out foraging due to weather and there's more dead that need to be disposed of.

Regarding the bear attack, I'm not sure what you mean by clumping security. Barracks placement doesn't affect the Bear Attack event. Defenders need to be deployed outside the hive to deal with external threats - there's an emergency button for overriding the slider and telling everybody to get out immediately if you hadn't spotted (though Bear Attack's lead time is longer than a bee's typical lifespan...).

Recovering from setbacks is a big part of the game in my mind, and my hope is that the first Bear Attack teaches players that it doesn't take much time or effort to rebuild. When I play for fun, I usually play without Defenders and just embrace Ol' Bitey and the wasps.

I had an absolute blast playing this. Very exciting. Very much looking forward to seeing how the project comes together. Great work!

I'm very glad to hear it's helpful!

Thanks for your understanding and your kind words. I'd love to rework Hive Time's UI to be scalable, but I don't foresee having time or resources for that in the near future. Things like the font_multiplier setting are small steps I can make along the way though.

Sorry to hear it's not playable on your monitor. Hive Time was designed to be played at 1280x720 at around 92dpi. I can understand how that would be difficult on some 4k screens, etc.. 

A while back, I added an undocumented font_multiplier setting that will let you change the font size, though this will not change the scale of UI elements, and depending on how big you make text, it might overflow the area it's intended to be within and you may see unintended horizontal scrollbars. You can find this setting in the "interface" section of config.cfg.

You can find config.cfg either by clicking the "Open User Folder" button from the Settings menu in-game, or by looking in the folder listed in the "Log, save, and config file locations" section of the FAQ here on Hive Time's Itch page.

Hope that helps!

Bees \o/

Thanks for your kind word. Glad to hear you're enjoying the game ^_^

I also am in the process of moving away from YouTube - I expect my account to be deactivated next month thanks to my country's "social media ban" and have been moving all my trailers and stuff over to a PeerTube instance.

Ah! All good then (I was worried I'd missed something). Again, very solid work!

Thanks!!!

The hope was that the brake would be identified as useless once you're going above a certain speed - its only practical value is in stopping to get a look at the stage and the level layout before uncontrollably rushing in (in my mind, this mirrors how it feels to be emotionally overhwelmed by sadness - at first when it's small, you can manage it, but once it crosses a threshold, it snowballs and becomes impossible to effectively hold in).

Thanks! It was an interesting challenge to come up with gameplay that resonated with each of the different types of tears we wanted to represent within the game.

All good. That's how jams go sometimes!

This could be a fun concept - is the game meant to give feedback when hitting the check button at 50%?

This was fun - love the crash animation

I struggled to work out what I needed to do here, so I'm not certain that I appreciated the game as intended. Most of the time when I left clicked, the colour division would spin wildly, but sometimes I was able to control it by clicking and dragging. I eventually was able to wake the guy from Chicken Run, but beyond that, I couldn't find any interactions.

The concept sounds neat, though!

This is really solid! Well done!

This was fun. Managed to get a bit hectic there for a minute, but I was able to keep everything half full in the end.

This was fun! Didn't enjoy pulling wings (or spraying flies, I guess), but I'm totally here for a surrelist fly's-eye-view of a kitchen.

I really enjoyed the presentation of this one. Well done!

There's some fun level design here! Great work!

Unfortunately, I got stuck after defeating the glass boss - the room stayed locked, and so far as I can tell, the switch in the middle of the room didn't do anything after it turned off the light.

Joie, this is fantastic!

Plantfriend

It took me a little while to realise that I was controlling relative buoyancy rather than vertical movement with W and S (my bad for not reading the instructions more closely), but once I worked that out, I thought this was neat! Similarly, I thought the crayweed was cosmetic decoration until I re-read the instructions after playing a few rounds.

Sorry to hear that you got sick - I hope you didn't push yourself too hard and that you're feeling better soon!

This is a very strong submission. Well done!

Although I haven't had the opportunity to play with a second player and so can't really appreciate it as intended, I did really enjoy seeing this come together across the jam. It looks like it could be a bunch of fun!

I think there's the beginning of something here, but it seems like both the downloadable build (boats wrong scale) and the web build (no mouse capture) have problems that make it hard to appreciate the intended experience.

Thanks!

I wasn't able to play the native Linux build (needs a newer glibc than I've got), but I grit my teeth and played the web build through to a winter level where the only campfires were either overlapping or close enough to snowbanks that I couldn't find a way to use the fire without my water being immediately replaced by snow again.

I really dig the expanding sense of possibility space provided by snow being a multi-step process, but I feel like the game takes a long time to get there. I would have loved to have seen more of that sort of thing (if there was something different about summer or autumn, I missed it).

Congrats on making a game, and thanks for doing a Linux build :)

I started early, and will keep working (submitting this to another, longer game jam too), but will keep 7th day snapshot builds around ^_^

Today's patch updates things to make small ship movements much easier. Would love to hear if that helps with the satellite placement troubles you had!

I think the biggest friction point in that regard is that you jump to full speed immediately, so small movements/adjustments become very difficult. An acceleration curve was on my todo list, but it was lower priority than everything else I was able to squeeze in before the jam deadline. I was just thinking now that I could also maybe implement a button that gives slow/precise movement, but the game already does have a lot more controls than I had originally intended! Either would be on the roadmap for any post-jam development.

I'm not sure whether you've unlocked it, but if you haven't, there's an upgrade that shrinks the placement radius, and you might actually find a little extra space between satellites to be beneficial.

Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the game!

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.

Hi! Thanks for your kind words.

Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to consider localisation at this time. Hive Time grew out of a jam game, and some of our hasty decisions were made without keeping localisation in mind, so there'd be a non-trivial amount of work needed before any proper localisation efforts could begin. There are also many strings that aren't included in the json files or are assembled programmatically (eg: I have a couple of functions that modify strings to handle English rules for pluralisation), etc. that complicate things further.

The json files bundled with the game are templates for the game's (mostly undocumented) mod support. You can copy the entire json folder into ~/.local/share/hivetime (or the equivalent path if you're not on Linux - you can find those in the FAQ here on the Itch page) and the game will load those versions over the ones included in the .pck file. If you just want to modify one file, you can just make a json folder in that location and drop the file you want to modify in there.

Hope that helps!

I have no plans/resources for localisation at this time, sorry.

Hi! Thanks for the report. I had meant to bundle all the SFML deps, but it seems I missed some! We'll look at getting that sorted.

Oh no! New builds just went up! :D

Ha ha, I hope you find it interesting when you do get around to trying it!