🔒 EXCLUSIVE: Hive time - Full Archive
Hive Time
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Hiveversary Update now available! See the devblog for more details.
Build a hive, make some honey! Hive Time is a bee themed management/base building sim. Harvest resources, grow your hive, and produce a new Queen before the current one dies.
Manage different bee roles in a totally scientifically inaccurate depiction of hive dynamics. Send Foragers out to find pollen and nectar, have Builders research new cell types, and ensure you have enough Beesitters to raise the next generation of bees.
Make interesting choices that affect the hive. Respond to wasp attacks, deal with outlaw slugs, or help a caterpillar realise a lifelong dream!
Hive Time's original soundtrack is available on Bandcamp, and you can find Hive Time t-shirts, stickers, and prints on RedBubble.
FAQ (click to expand)
Is this game free?
I believe that the effort we have put into creating and supporting Hive Time is worth at least $10. However, I also believe that in an ideal world, financial barriers should never prevent people from participating in culture. For this project, I'm in a position to make the game available under a pay-what-you-want model so that it can be accessible to people who can't afford $10.
If you can afford $10, but would prefer to not pay, that's up to you, but I hope that if you find enjoyment in the game that you'll come back to give some support that matches that enjoyment.
Similarly, Peter has released Hive Time's original soundtrack on Bandcamp under a pay-what-you-want model.
- Cheese
Is this game finished?
We consider Hive Time to be a complete game.
In the weeks and months following release, we shipped many patches as well as two large content updates, which are included with the game for free.
Default controls
Default controls are as follows (custom bindings can be set from the Controls menu):
- Left mouse - Select/interact
- Right mouse - Close radial menu
- Middle mouse/Cursor keys - Pan view
- Scroll wheel/Page Up/Page Down - Zoom view
- Home - Reset pan and zoom
- End - Zoom out as far as possible
- Space - Toggle bee inspection mode
- F5 - Trigger autosave
- F9 - Load latest save
- Shift - Hold before performing an action in a radial menu to be able to repeat that menu option with subsequent cell clicks
- Alt+Enter - Toggle fullscreen
- Escape - Close radial menu, close/select negative option in events, pause game
- Print Screen - Save a screenshot
Chat integration
Hive Time now has optional chat integration, including voting for preferred event choices, voting on periodic "gifts," and have chat participants show up as bees in-game!
If you use Twitch, you can use the Prefill for Twitch button and then pop in your channel name preceded by a hash symbol (eg: #ValiantCheese). That's it - no passwords or tokens needed!
The Community settings menu has a Show Instructions button with more details and information on how each chat feature works.
If you want every chat user to end up with a bee the first time they speak (providing the population limit hasn't been reached - you can still manually spawn them from the throne though), make sure the Chat Bees setting is set to Always.
Cheats and debug controls
My hope is that you won't need them, but if you get stuck or want to try specific stuff, there are a few "cheats" in place. To access debug functions, you must enable "debug mode" from the System settings menu. Pressing the Backtick key (typically the key with ~ on it will display a menu, which lists available debug functions and their shortcuts.
- B - Complete all in-progress construction
- C - Clear all in-progress cooldowns
- H - Raise resource storage limits by 999
- G - Give 9999 of all resources (won't increase storage limits)
- Shift+E - Show event debug/selection dialog
- Shift+V - Show vignette debug/selection dialog
- E - Force the next queued event to trigger (events with unmet conditions will not show)
- V - Force the next vignette to trigger
- T - Give 99999 progress to current research item
- R - Reload all data files (resets research!)
- F - Mark all foraging zones as explored
Log, save, and config file locations
Logs, saves, and configuration files can be found in the following locations for each supported platform:
- Linux:
~/.local/share/hivetime/
(note that this respects XDG_DATA_HOME) - Mac:
~/Library/Application Support/hivetime/
- Windows:
%APPDATA%/hivetime/
Selecting the Open User Folder option from the settings menu will open this location in a file browser.
Technical help
If you're experiencing troubles, please send a detailed description of what is occurring along with relevant save files and logs to support [AT] jbushproductions.com
Common technical hurdles and how to cross them:
No text is visible outside of the main menu
This occurs when the game is unable to load fonts (the main menu text is actually a 3D model!).
The most common cause of this is the game being unable to find the fonts folder. Please make sure that it is extracted into the same folder as the game's executable (.x86_64, .exe) and that the working folder is set to the same location when running the game.
If you're not feeling confident extracting the game properly or are still experiencing problems, consider playing Hive Time through the Itch.io App, which handles all of that for you.
MacOS says the app is damaged!
It's lying. Thanks Apple.
You should be able to run the game without problems if you install and launch it via the Itch app.
Alternatively, you can use the xattr command line tool with -cr parameters on the game's .app folder to clear the quarantine flags that are preventing it from running. You can learn more about xattr by opening a terminal and typing man xattr
The game freezes briefly when bees commence construction on a cell
The construction progress indicators may require the shader cache to be updated for some graphics drivers, which may cause a brief pause. Turning off Construction Indicators from the Video Settings menu will prevent this.
Sound suddenly becomes garbled or stutters
When under high load, the Godot engine's sound server can become unstable and cause the rest of the game to lag.
Typically, this is caused by the Bee Sound Count setting in the Audio settings menu being too high. The default value of 25 seems to be appropriate for most systems that the game has been tested on, but lower may be more appropriate for your computer.
When this occurs, the game will typically need to be restarted in order for audio to return to normal.
As my hive gets big, the game's frame rate slowly declines
During development, I made the decision to not put a performance oriented maximum cap on hive or population size, so generally speaking, it will always be possible to make a hive that's too big for your computer to handle.
The game should still be playable at a low frame rate, and spawning a new Queen doesn't specifically require a large hive, so it's up to you to play within the constraints of what you're comfortable with.
The game's minimum requirements are based on running the game with Shadows, Anti-alising, and Depth Of Field settings all disabled, and with the Bee Sound Count audio setting set to zero. These options can have a big impact on performance.
If you find that sound is garbled or stuttering, please refer to the "Sound suddenly becomes garbled or stutters" section.
Current known issues:
- Keyboard bindings with modifiers that share primary keys with other bindings (eg: Ctrl+S and S) may behave unexpectedly
Gameplay tips
There's a lot to keep track of in Hive Time! Part of the fun is in exploring and learning how different systems work. Generally, the impact of your actions takes a little while to be apparent, so observing after experimenting can be important!
If you're feeling stuck, take a look at the Hints/tips section of the in-game "Beepedia"!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Hive Time turns 6!17 days ago
- Happy 5th beethday, Hive Time!Dec 12, 2024
- World Bee Day 2024 & v1.2-149, v1.2-150 changelogsMay 20, 2024
- Happy 4th beethday, Hive Time!Dec 12, 2023
- World Bee Day 2023 & v1.2-138, v1.2-139 changelogsMay 20, 2023
- Happy 3rd beethday and v1.2-129 changelogDec 12, 2022
- World Bee Day and v1.2-118, v1.2-119 changelogsMay 20, 2022
- v1.2-100 changelogJan 02, 2022
Comments
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Thank you for making this, it is very nice to play.
Thanks for your kind words. I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the game!
Greetings,
Great game for real! I'd love to make an Italian translation of it (I've been a professional translator in the past, now still at it when I can, out of passion), but the changes I tried to make to the .json files (just a few strings in one of them, actually, from within the .json folder) don't seem to have effect once ingame. What am I missing? Thanks again, keep up the good work!
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!
It worked! Awesome, thanks!
Yeah, I get it that localizing a game is no easy feat for a very small team (sometimes even larger developers can't bother themselves with it)... but I can do that - at least as far as Italian is concerned! I have a few more questions, when you have the time:
1) I have gone through the files in the .json folder; however, while many interface elements can be translated from there (e.g. Beepedia entries, bee names, vignettes etc.), some game key elements can't be found where they can be safely translated, like resource names (pollen, nectar, etc.), bee roles or menu entries. I assume they are within the .pck file; if so, what tool should I use to access and modify them?
2) Is the game still under development? Do you take suggestions/ideas on further content and/or new base mechanics?
3) I've read about the sale model and all that, but now, five years into release, would you consider making the game available on Steam? The difference in publicity would be unparalleled, and the game deserves it not just for its gameplay value, but its great educational potential first and foremost (if anything, you could still use the income for the cause: in the end it's always for the bees!)
Thanks!
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.
Please add the Russian language.
I have no plans/resources for localisation at this time, sorry.
Good game. Well polished. Nice job! Q: why not on Steam? Best!
Thanks for your kind words!
When I released hive Time, I wanted its pay-what-you-want model to be a core part of its identity. Unfortunately, not only does Steam not offer this payment model, but the distribution agreement would forbid me from mentioning its availability on other storefronts, so I wouldn't be able to tell Steam users about that aspect of its identity.
Itch is a good fit for me and my work.
I meant to go to bed an hour ago (it's midnight currently) but instead I am entranced by the motion of the bees as they fly around the hive and trying to make the hive look a bit more organized.
Wonderful game. Can't bee-lieve that it's taken me this long to play it. Can't wait to play even more with my first new queen! 🐝
Ah! Thank you for your kind words! I'm very happy to hear that your hive is progressing well and that you're having fun :)
Here's to a long line of happy, healthy queens who make good decisions for the hive \o/
I was curious about the newupdate, but it does not work for me: “Hive Time.app is damaged and can’t be opened” (M1 mac).
I double checked with version 1.1 and that one launches fine, but I noticed the following
1.2: Application (Universal) 1.1: Application (Intel)
So it seems to be a recent change.
Sorry to hear you're having trouble. Have you checked the "MacOS says the app is damaged!" section of the Technical Help section here on the Itch page? I have some suggestions that may help.