For The Hive News

Hi everyone, prior to our next update on the new combat please take a look at the new flight controls. Don't they look great?

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In today's video, we're diving deeper into the intriguing dynamics of family structures, mating rituals, and the strategic elements of base management within our game. We'll explore how these systems interconnect to enhance your gameplay experience, providing you with more immersive and tactical layers to enjoy. We've worked hard to develop these features with depth and realism, and we're eager to share the intricacies with you.



Please share your thoughts in the comments below—what do you think about these new additions? Are you looking forward to testing them out? Let us know if there are other aspects you’re excited to see us cover in future discussions. Your feedback is invaluable as we continue to refine and expand our game.

Feel free to join us in Discord or Facebook for direct access & updates..

Facebook page https://discord.com/invite/forthehive Game Website

Updates on development & Alpha News!

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Game Development Milestones

Last time we checked in, "For the Hive" was already shaping up to be an immersive experience, with core mechanics like movement, climbing, flying, and the beginnings of a complex life system firmly in place. Since then, we've been hard at work refining the game's physics, allowing players to interact with their environment and foes in more dynamic ways, such as grabbing opponents' legs—a feature we're still perfecting.

We've laid down the groundwork for bee colonies and hives, cleaned up our codebase for better scalability, and polished many existing systems. It's safe to say the game is evolving in ways we're incredibly proud of.



Some major improvements to the environment have also taken place. Including 2 brand new characters - The Fly & The Rhino beetle.

Learn more about their playstyles here

https://www.forthehivegame.com/fly




https://www.forthehivegame.com/rhinobeetle



Expanding Our Team

In exciting company news, we're expanding our team by 3 new members! This growth will enable us to bring more hands and minds to our project, ensuring "For the Hive" reaches new heights in 2024.

So that's +3 new Arcane Worlds T's being shipped out!

(A despicable plug in am I right?)


Enhancing Communication



We acknowledge that last year, our updates were few and far between, mainly due to the nature of our work focusing on the game's infrastructure. This year, we're committed to improving our communication with you. We plan to open our Miro board to the public, allowing you a behind-the-scenes look at our development process, and we'll be providing more frequent devlogs and updates to keep you informed and involved in our journey.


To access the Miro click the following link: MIRO


Early Access and Alpha Testing

We understand the anticipation and occasional frustration regarding early access and alpha testing dates. Developing our first major game has been a learning experience, and we appreciate your patience as we navigate these uncharted waters. Our primary goal remains to deliver a playable version of "For the Hive" to you as soon as possible.


This year, we're excited to share that we aim to put the Alpha version into your hands, focusing on giving you a taste of the combat system we've been diligently refining.


What's Next?

Our immediate focus is on perfecting the combat system to make it feel visceral, engaging, and satisfyingly strategic. We're drawing inspiration from renowned combat systems to ensure ours is not only fun but also deeply immersive. We estimate this phase could take 6-8 months, but we're excited about the possibility of releasing a test version thereafter.


A Heartfelt Thank You

We couldn't end this update without expressing our deepest gratitude to our incredible community. Your support and patience fuels our dedication to making "For the Hive" a game worth waiting for. A special thank you to our Discord mods, isux and Ogre, for your exceptional management of our community space. Your efforts create a welcoming and engaging environment for all our fans.


Here's to a year filled with progress, excitement, and, most importantly, fun. Happy New Year, and thank you for being part of this journey!


Please support our mods by giving them a follow in Twitch!

https://www.twitch.tv/isuxgamingofficial

https://www.twitch.tv/ogre_plush

Hi For The Hivers!

Today we would like to introduce you to a new character we've been working on. The Wheel Bug!



The wheel bug (Arilus cristatus) is a unique assassin bug species. With its unique coloration it stands out in the insect world. One of its most distinguishing features is the wheel-like structure present on its thorax, from which it gets its name.

​As skilled predators, wheel bugs use their pointed beak to inject venom into their prey, primarily targeting other insects. This venom helps immobilize and digest their victims.

When a wheel bug bites an insect, the injected venom quickly immobilizes and begins to digest the prey. This venom is potent and effective, making the wheel bug a formidable predator. The prey is often killed swiftly, allowing the wheel bug to feed on its liquefied tissues.



Wheel bugs can communicate with each other through vibrations created by drumming their abdomens against a surface. These vibrations serve as a means of courtship and territorial defense.

take an even closer look here: https://youtu.be/20mS-boClC0

Join us on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/forthehive
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1747630/For_The_Hive/
Game Website: www.forthehivegame.com/assassinbug

Hello Hivers!

Welcome to the 6th installment of our game updates, we’re excited to share our progress with you once again.

We’re in the middle of working on a lot of exciting new additions to the game, which include inventory, harvesting system, metamorphosis and life stages. We’re also going to show you some cool new insect models that we’re working on, one of them is fully operational, it is, as you might have guessed: the honeybee.

So why don’t your pour favorite hot beverage into your trusty FTH mug and let’s get started. (For mugs and other merch, you can go to https://www.arcaneworlds.com/shop.)

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[h2]1) New Models[/h2]

In the previous devlog, we announced that we were going into a more HD and realistic art direction for the game. We’re gradually replacing our placeholder models with more detailed ones, in the meantime, we’ve also worked on some cool new characters that are going to populate our game world very soon.

These new characters include the Black Widow spider, the Black Emperor scorpion, and the Stag beetle.

We spent hours contemplating these beautiful models, and we can’t wait to have them interact with each other.









Spiders and scorpions are not technically insects, they are arachnids, but for the sake of simplicity, we use the term insect for every character in the game.

[h2]2) The Honeybee[/h2]



Honeybees are wonderful creatures. They are social by nature, and will often collaborate to achieve the most arduous of tasks, from finding nectar to defeating larger foes.

In FTH, you will be able to climb the hive ladder, from a simple worker going back and forth to find food, to a queen that controls the whole colony.

We will dive deeper into colonies in the coming months. For now, we have a Honeybee worker armed with a dangerous stinger, it can fly, gather nectar, and get into a fight if need be.







[h2]3) Resources and Resource Harvesting[/h2]



Gathering resources is a major aspect of survival in FTH. We’ve added a new gameplay system that allows you to gather resources such as nectar from flowers and sap from leaves.

These resources can be taken back to your hive to transform into other, more useful resources such as honey.

We plan on expanding this system to let you build a whole “industry“ that will fuel your colony, allowing it to be healthy and grow stronger.




[h2]4) Inventory System[/h2]

So you’re ready to gather your resources, now where are you going to put them?
In your inventory of course!

In real life, insects don’t have tiny backpacks to carry their stuff, but we took some creative liberties there just to make life easier for you.

Your inventory has a weight limit, if you exceed it your character will become increasingly heavier and will tire faster. So you’ll have to manage that aspect as you go on your adventures, and weigh in the risks of carrying a bit more stuff and becoming more vulnerable to predators.




[h2]5) Life Stages and Metamorphosis[/h2]

As in real life, one of your main purposes as a player is to grow.

Eating enough, sleeping well, staying healthy and clean, all these elements will contribute to faster growth.

Growing also means going through multiple life stages through metamorphosis. For now metamorphosis does not have a visual component, but we plan to have some nice animations showing something cool like larvae coming out of eggs or adults breaking cocoons and deploying their wings for the first time.





[h2]6) Future Plans for World Design[/h2]

One of our main challenges in making the game is to create interesting maps to live in and explore.

Our attempts so far to create a fully procedural world have produced good but repetitive results. So we are going in a different direction, where we will be creating hand-crafted maps, and only use procedural generation in well defined areas. That way, we can ensure that the maps are really interesting and fun, with recognizable landmarks, and many cool areas where you can live your insect life to the fullest.

We see this as an opportunity to explore many aspects of insect life, for example, we plan on creating an urban setting where species such as houseflies, mosquitoes and cockroaches can thrive.









[h2]7) Our Plans for Release[/h2]

When we started working on the game a little more than a year ago, we promised ourselves that we would do our best to deliver the most fun and enjoyable experience that we could craft within the limits of our current resources.

Our plans have changes throughout the year, from a simple low-poly game with only a couple of playable species, we’re now aiming at a much broader experience, with lots of species all living in the same world, some even living in colonies with hundreds of individuals.

We are aware of feature creep, and in our case, we believe we have that under control. We simply want to push the game harder in order to make the world more real and enjoyable. If that takes more development time then we believe it’s worth it, and we hope you do too.


[h2]8) Final Thoughts[/h2]

We are getting into the actual lives of insects, while this is very exciting, this is also quite a challenging phase of development. In the coming months, we will be exploring more aspects of life such as mating and living in colonies, while also fleshing out the mechanics that we already have.

Make sure to never miss an update by subscribing to our Youtube channel and hitting the notification bell.

If you want to become a fan as well, make sure to sign up to our email newsletter on forthehivegame.com.

Get in touch with us on our public Discord server where we’ve been talking with our growing community, answering questions, and overall having fun talking about the wonderful world of insects.

Follow us on social media, post your comments down below or on one of our official channels.

We’re excited to share more of our progress with you along our journey, stay tuned for more news!