RELEASE
Hive is scheduled to release tomorrow, September 14th at 8:00AM PDT.
There will be a launch discount of 10%, and Hive will retail at £6.99 or $9.99. (Discount not taken into account).
Hive will not be participating in any Halloween sales this year!
Development Update
I've been working to finalise any existing content in Hive this week. I've added the ability to enable removal of bushes and mushrooms / foods when using the destruction tool and made some changes to how Hive saves certain things. I'm long past adding exciting new content to Hive so there's not much to share that will interest you. However, I thought I'd give a little overview of your tasks when playing.
Map Overviews
Haven Forest: This is the first map and is largely easy to conquer. The challenge is getting familiar with the game and Haven's enemies like the explosive Baxmite.
The Sleek Dunes: This map is more difficult, with angrier enemies who can see you from further away. They're capable of firing shards of chitin either in flight or on death, damaging multiple structures or stopping your arrows from reaching them. Due to the dryness of the landscape, crops grow slow and food is hard to come by.
The Violet Grasslands: A tough zone to dominate, the grasslands is protected by fierce poisonous enemies and an even more deadly queen. The land is populated with resources and is heavily fertile. But if you don't adapt quick, you'll be buried alive.
The Dense Tropics: By far the most detailed, most interesting map, I don't want to reveal too much about it. The rules are slightly different here, and there's multiple new challenges beyond new enemies.
Future Ideas
Should there be demand for it, there are some other concepts to experiment with. New buildings, maps and enemies alike.
Difficulty
Hive is supposed to be a fairly challenging game. The further you get, not only into each zone, but actually unlocking new regions, the harder it will be. The Dense Tropics is an extremely tough map with an overwhelming amount of enemies. Each map has a set difficulty level and it cannot be adjusted. You can, however, prepare better each time. It's best to stay out of the way of any Hives unless you have no choice. Waking them up can cause a chain reaction you might not be able to come back from.
Languages and OS support
Hive is only in English, and I'm afraid it will remain that way for the time being. With enough demand, I can look at supporting more languages. Same goes for the Operating System.
Windows is the primary platform for Hive. Testing is in progress for Linux but more voluntary testing will be required to see if its safe to release to you. I have no reason to believe it wont work, but I don't want to risk someone purchasing the game and losing an hour of work to the save system failing on a different system for example.
Hive will not be released on Mac.
Please get in touch if you have any questions or requests!