APICO News

2023 is almost at an end, and it’s been a busy ol’ year looking back! Here’s a lil ellraiser/TNgineer wrapped…

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Started the year off strong dropping a demo for Rift Breach, an experimental lil dungeon crawler.

This was super fun to make, and helped me get better at scoping small as well as got my out of my usual pixel art comfort zone!

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Then FletchMakes hosted a 7 day gamejam + I couldn’t resist making the “APICO but frogs” I’d always joked about

Mudborne was born(e) + I was overwhelmed with how much people loved it. It also showed me just how much I can get done with a super strict scope and detailed plan!

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APICO had it’s 1st birthday! From a silly concept made in HTML to now published on all platforms with over 50,000 beekeepers playing - truly never thought it would go anywhere

I’m forever grateful to everyone who’s played and shared this funky bee game

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At this point trying to keep up with socials for 3 different games was getting far too much and I needed help - enter @mibyledraws who joined as the first official TNgineer!

Thank you for all your hard work, wonderful videos, and helping me keep on top of everything
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I got round to releasing the 2nd free content update for APICO, "What Lies Beeneath”, with all sorts of weird and wonderful ocean friends

It’s been tough to keep working on this mess of a game, but it’s worth it to see how much people have been enjoying all the new content

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Decided that I wanted to take the Mudborne concept into a full-game, and started planning out everything along with a new art style and vibe for it (there’s only so far a sprite-rip of APICO can go lmao)

It’s wild to see how far I’ve started to come from tiny rectangle trees!

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Towards the end of the year I left my freelance contract + went full-time gamedev, not quite by choice but it was something I wanted to do for a while

I’ll now be able to spend all my time on the games, as well as all the other little concepts I’ve had bubbling away...

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I moved from GameMaker to LÖVE, built a small framework for future games like Snacktorio + Mudborne, and contributed to the engine itself

Was the first time actually helping making a substantial contribution to an open-source project and I learnt a lot!

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After a couple years in + out of development and a last minute engine change to LÖVE, I finally finished + released the demo for Snacktorio

We’ve had some amazing feedback and it’s been so gratifying to finally get it out and see people enjoy it

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Looking ahead to 2024, it’ll be my first year as a full-time gamedev (as well as reaching lvl 30!)

I’m planning to release the final update for APICO, as well as releasing either Mudborne or Snacktorio - might even have to drop some new demos too, as a treat…

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Thanks for everyone who has supported me and TNgineers throughout the year.

Whether that was playing the demos, buying the games, sharing your progress, joining the discord, posting wholesome reviews, sending me cute bee pics - I’m truly grateful to you all

Hi friends!

It’s almost December, which means it’s time to recap what happened last month!

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The demo for our factory-cooking simulator, Snacktorio, has finally been released! Thanks so much to all of you chefs, players and content creators for your support
If you’d like to get a taste of what’s in store you can watch the trailer below, or just go try out the demo on Steam!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIsDeQQokwM

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In the middle of the month we snuggled up and celebrated cozy games through the Cozy Quest Festival hosted on Steam, with APICO and Mudborne!



The organizers, Secret Mode, hosted a lovely stream to try out some of the games and demo taking part in the festival, and played the Mudborne demo while interviewing Ell, which you can watch here.

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Our little froggy nature-sim reached 10,000 wishlists last month! We are so happy and thankful to each and every single person who’s supported Mudborne, played it, and wishlisted it on Steam. Here’s all 10,000 of you, live in-game:



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Aaand that’s it for this month’s recap! Thanks for sticking with us and keeping the soups coming :)

Take care!
Manon, Ell and Jamie

I broke divepoints oops sorry

Hey Beekeepers!

Beeeen a busy bee working on the demo for Snacktorio but now that’s finishing up I had some time to work through the backlog of various bugs and some MP fixes - thanks for all your patience!!

~ Ell

[h2]Changes[/h2]

• Updated Steam Achievement descriptions to say 'half' rather than specific numbers as the numbers are now outdated
  
• Increased the pickup range of dropped items
  

[hr][/hr][h2]Crash Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed "Variable .species(100014, -2147483648) not set before reading it" (sc_beehotel1_change)
  
• Fixed "Unable to find instance for object index 129284" (sc_slot_shift_click SLOT_LDOWN)
  
• Fixed "Variable .oid(100032, -2147483648) not set before reading it" (sc_util_get_obj_at HIGHLIGHTER_STEP)
  

[hr][/hr][h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fixed salinity level of coral tanks being set to the ph level in multiplayer games
  
• Fixed sludge + coral achievements not unlocking when playing in a friend's game in multiplayer
  
• Fixed a duplicate boat being made in multiplayer when a client player dived back to the surface near a boat
  
• Fixed butterfly mutation cuases duplicate flowers
  
• Fixed Cultivator Bee entry showing the wrong sprite for the required Honeycore item
  
• Fixed Coral Flower items saying you could place them on grass, the liars
  
• Fixed Ashthorn not being able to be used to calm Stubborn Bees
  
• Fixed "Tier 3" label in the flower book overlapping chapter icons
  
• Fixed a couple of rogue PLAYER.NAMEs in magazines instead of showing your own lovely name
  
• Fixed Coral Tanks trying to process Prismatic Slivers
  
• Fixed beehives sometimes keeping the grumpy status after a queen ends its lifecycle
  
• Fixed time not going back to normal if you click a gate or boat while sleeping/benching (and in MP)
  
• Fixed being able to open the Butterfly Book by clicking the empty book slot before its unlocked
  
• Fixed being able to place Ocean Lanterns underwater in the cave walls
  
• Fixed footstep sound for grass playing when using the rubberring in deep water
  

Hi friends!

A month passed by since our last newsletter, here’s what’s been going on!

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We joined the Frog Con, an online convention for frog lovers that mixes educational panels with creative works, in the middle of the month. Mudborne was one of the froggy games and got played during the convention!

For the occasion, we shared more about the game on our socials, as well as some redesign work-in-progress sneak peeks!



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A fellow beekeeper created a checklist tracker & guide spreadsheet for APICO! It’s truly an amazing resource, and includes the Ocean Update (3.0) new content.



Thank you so much DeluxeGremlin for this!

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Fellow beekeeper Hazel shared this screenshot of her base in our community discord! Between the rainbow hive garden and the Mothense concert for the NPCs, it’s a dream place to bee. If you want to share you’re own cute pics you should come join us!



In other APICO news, the lovely Chelsea, that you may know as myPotatoGames on Twitter, wrote a very wholesome review of our beekeeping sim! It’s always heartwarming to hear such nice feedback
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Last month, our discord bot beebot started sharing a beemoji mashup everyday, and that gave us an idea: what if you could make your own mashup, and beebot could send it to the server?



You can now submit your mashup by filling this form, and it’ll get added to the bot’s daily posts! :D

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That’s it for this month’s recap! Thanks for sticking with us and keeping these hives buzzing, it’s been a quiet month but we have some exciting stuff coming next time!

Take care!
Manon, Ell and Jamie