APICO News

Hey friends!

Some good progress on the 3.0 this month, finally taking a huge bite out of all the coral related mechanics (wouldn't recommend, tastes awful)

This post will contain spoilers of 3.0 content.

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[h2]Night On The Tiles[/h2]
So where we'd left off we had finished fishing and added Captain, Skipper's dad, along with a bunch of cute fishing themed decoration items. This meant it was time to move onto 2nd of the three areas of this update - coral reefs.

I had already sketched out a lot of the coral stuff a long time ago, but it was time for a quick refresher on what was needed and to get my head into the zone for the new mechanics.

the scaffolds are used to regrow dead coral regions

First up was getting the coral into the game - my quick dirty hack idea was to make them into floor tiles (like the wood tiles you can place). This would mean they could act like pier tiles for object placement, and tie in nicely with a lot of other tile based stuff that already existed.

captain peepin

The dark blue tiles are "dying" coral which needs to be restored. Restoring all the dying coral restores the reef, and flowers/flora bloom allowing you access to the butterflies and solitary bees that make their home in the reefs.

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[h2]Personal Chemistry[/h2]
First you need to collect coral slithers (gently), which you can then put in a coral tank where you control the environment to make sure the coral is comfortable and can grow big and strong. This uses acid+alkali (first bought from bumblemore, then later from bee products), and salt!

yea now there's a chemistry lesson to go with the biology ones fight me

Once you've grown your new coral pieces, you can place scaffolds for them to sit in. The action of nearby coral bees will slowly help the new coral grow and restore the dying coral underneath it.

sped up for GIF purposes!

It's a slow process overall, as it's meant to be something you do alongside your usual bee-related schenanigans - but once you've restored a reef it's done, and you have access to not only the new bees/butterflies attracted to the bloomed flowers. Plus, Bumblemore gives you some pretty sweet items for each of the three reefs...

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[h2]Setting The Scene[/h2]
Bumblemore himself can be found out in the Tundra, I wanted a bit more of a fancier setpiece given his importance in the gameplay, and took the opportunity to update poor Skipper's piece of crap that hasn't been updated since the original alpha in 2020 - especially now there were a few more lore additions in this update that meant it'd make sense to match the two ships.

whats that weird little black box I wonder...

Once I was happy with that the only thing left was to add all the new bees and butterflies, and damn it's actually been so long since I added a social bee I forgot how much was involved...

Luckily past me had drawn a bunch of the coral bees already, so I only needed to draw two new ones, but loading in all the assets and all the correct dictionary entries took ages!

some new friends to discover out on the high seas!

With all that loaded in I could test all the new mechanics fully. All that remains now is to actually spawn in the coral reefs automatically when the world loads (like how Sto + Codey pop into existence), and check I don't break things massively, but not too worried on that as it uses the same system as the 2.0 NPC areas, and we have way more open ocean to play with.

With that done and the new set-piece in I can add Bumblemore and all the goodies he sells, including all the sweet diving equipment - but thats for next month!

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So not bad for a couple weeks work this month! We had a bit of crunch as well trying to get all the new writing and text ready to give to the localisation team early as they have quite a long lead time at the moment, but next month I should be able to finally make a stab on the last, and arguably most exciting part of the update (deep sea diving), and get a finished build over to QA!

Also, welcome to all newbees who've started their adventure thanks to the Wholesome Games sale! If you've been enjoying this silly lil bee game pls give it a nice review on Steam - it helps us massively and keeps me motivated through some of the gnarlier parts of these content updates

~ Ell

[This post was released early for KoFi Supporters]

Hey friends!

Another month flies by, it feels like I was only just writing the June recap! Here's whats been going on.

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The lovely people at Wholesome Games have organised a Steam Sale that’s host to all sorts of cosy games, with some sweet discounts on offer!

As part of the sale, APICO will be 40% off until 7th August, with both OSTs 50% off as well.

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For the redditors among you, you might have heard of a little thing called /r/place - a community canvas where everyone can get involved.

Thanks to the help of the community, we were able to get APICO immortalised in a small section with a bunch of other indies you might know!

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We were lucky enough to have APICO selected for the Itch.io Summer Selects Bundle, a special bundle containing APICO and 5 other cool indies!

Thanks to everyone who bought the bundle and supported us, we hope you enjoy all your new sweet games
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For our console friends, 2.2.3 is now live on Xbox / Playstation. This was a small update but contained some important fixes and means the consoles are now in-line with PC!

Unfortunately Nintendo wasn’t as kind with approval and still won’t let the patch through, however you’re not missing out on anything major!

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So that’s a wrap on July, bee safe and we’ll see you next month!

Love,
Ell & Jamie

Hey friends!

Was a bit busy with Rift Breach and Snacktorio this month, but managed to polish off the rest of the fishing related stuff!

This post will contain spoilers of 3.0 content.

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[h2]Gone Fishing[/h2]
So continuing where I left off I finished up the rest of the fishing minigame.

gotta be quick!

I'm still not sold on it 100%, but I just wanted something a bit more visually interesting than the usual "click and wait and click again" type fishing we're all used to.

I also properly fleshed out all of the fish and their spawning conditions, biome, time etc. Doing this made me realise there were some "missing" biomes that needed some fish too so I drew a couple of new fish to even things out at a nice round 15.

so many new friends to discover!

With that done I did some testing with the different lure types and then that was fishing done!

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[h2]Captain Cabinets[/h2]
With that done I needed the fishing NPC, Skipper's Dad, so that I could then introduce him, fishing concepts, plus some different fishing themed items and decor.

look at all these new goodies!

I wanted to add a few different things that people could add near their docks, as well as a new type of pier tile to mix things up a bit. Alongside the new fishing board + lure workshop I felt like it made for some cute seaside building!

bird? what bird?

After giving him his own spawn area / base, the only thing left is the writing for the Captain himself, but I'll be giving Jamie all the writing in one go as it helps make everything a bit more consistent with each other

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With the fishing done and the Captain added, it means I can get stuck into the coral reef and diving stuff next, which is the majority of the 3.0 content but I had to add a lot of "new" systems to get the fishing working which held me up a lot.

~ Ell

[This post was released early for KoFi Supporters]

Hey friends!

We're now halfway through the year, which is a scary thought given all the things I still want to get done in 2023... better get to it!

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So after a very long time, APICO has finally released on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

This is the latest version of the game, and includes all the beeautiful butterfly content! We hope all the new beekeepers enjoy their stay at Port APICO
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Rift Breach got a bunch of new updates, and the demo was re-released for Steam’s Nextfest, which you can still try out!

Unfortunately it didn’t really gather any response or interest, so it’ll be going into cold storage for a bit while we work on the other games.

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Mudborne got nominated for the “Rising Star” award in the 2023 UK Indie Cup!

We didn’t win in the end, but the fact that a little 1 week froggy demo managed to get a nomination is still amazing to see!

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Feed The Beasts is now Snacktorio! We had to change the name for legal reasons and we asked the Factorio team as a joke, but they said yes.

It’s weird having to call it something different after 3 years but here we are - you can find us in all the same places just a different name and logo.

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So that’s a wrap on June, bee safe and we’ll see you next month!

Love,
Ell & Jamie

Hey friends!

A slow but steady start made this month into the 3.0 content, with a bunch of little tweaks to get us started!

This post will contain spoilers of 3.0 content.

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[h2]Birthday Bee![/h2]
May was a special month as it's the birthday month for APICO having been released a year ago on World Bee Day (20th May)! We had a lot of different sales + deals to celebrate, leading to DOUBLE the amount of players we'd had up until that point in one week.

(To all the new bees - welcome! I hope you enjoy this silly lil bee game

Safe to say I was pretty busy running around putting out fires and answering a million questions all over the place - but I did manage to still get some development work done eventually!

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[h2]Where To Beegin[/h2]
One problem I have with gamedev in general is getting p. overwhelmed with how much there is todo - you've seen the list of stuff planned for 3.0 and when broken down into dev work it's even longer!

here's just some misc + fishing stuff broken down - not even the coral or ocean stuff yet!!

What I try to do is break it down into smaller sections, and then start with the "quick wins" to try and make a dent in the list first so as to not get too demoralised. When there's only one developer it's definitely a LOT (let alone the fact I have 2 other games on the go at the same time)

I started out working through some quick fixes and changes though, like adding the moon, moon phases, and a cute little pocketwatch to give more details on the top-left GUI icons you always see.



I also did some stuff like creating new natural beehives when you repopulate a species (to add to the feeling of actually impacting the world), updating some of the logic with butterflies + flowers, and adding in some new hairstyles - basically just lots of little things to help settle back into the codebase.

this one looks weirdly familiar...

With that I was starting to feel a bit more warmed up and more used to how APICO does things, so I added the first new machine for 3.0 - the fly workshop!

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[h2]Fly Fishing[/h2]
I've wanted to add fishing to the game for a while, as I think it's a nice "time-waster" to fill in the gaps between waiting for certain things in APICO, but didn't give much thought outside of the general concept.

When I sat down to look at it properly I thought fly fishing would be the best route, as needing to craft little lures seemed like the perfect vibe for APICO. Crafting lures would also let me give some of the special bee produce a use, as it would effect the overall lure "luck" and the player always has plenty of them.

about time we had a new mechanism huh?

The fly workshop takes hoops, twine, glue and feathers (dropped from birbs!), along with your special produce to make a little lure - the stats decided by the materials you use.

Once you have your lures you'd be able to use them along with a rod to cast into any deep water to start the fishing minigame! I spent a bunch of time deciding the best way to do this, and what I settled on was a two-parter, first cast the lure out, and then wait for fish to appear and get within "range" to grab 'em.

grab radius is based on how close you cast to the center yellow "goal"

It also took me far too long getting a nice "arc" for the lure when cast, and I wanted a nice back and forth animation to mimic the way fly fishers actually cast their lures.

i hate maths so much

With that I had the actual grab minigame todo, which will involve the little fishies coming near and attempting to eat your delicious honey flavour lure - unless you grab them in-time, which then catches you a fish!

Different conditions/biomes/weather will affect the fish caught (as you'd expect from APICO), and ultimately it'll just be an optional collect-them-all - although you will get some new special items for doing so...



I'm taking my time on the minigame as I want to get it right - and there's nothing quite like it in APICO so it's a challenge trying to make something fit correctly with what players are used to!

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Once I've finished off the fishing i'll be adding Skipper's Dad, and then fishing will be done for now and we can move onto Coral Reefs!

I've got to go back to Rift Breach for a bit next month for NextFest but have set aside some time for another chunk of 3.0 goodies.

~ Ell

[This post was released early for Supporters]