Mudborne News

Hi friends!

A new year is upon us, and it’s been a bit of a manic start with Ell moving house but we’re back on track now!

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As you may have seen on our socials, pets are coming to APICO along with the final “Honeycore” update! To celebrate, we held a design-your-own-pet competition (which receieved over 200 submissions!), and narrowed down the cuties to just five finalists, which were put up to a vote by all of you.



Although the dino was the vote winner by a small margin, everyone found it super difficult to pick - and why should they have to? We’ve decided that all five designs will be winners, so you’ll be able to enjoy all of them as pets in the final update - congratulations to all the artists!
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Ells been working hard on the Honeycore Update, and you might have seen some bits and bobs on our socials and on Discord!



New cute decor and furniture, light automation, moving crates & beeboxes without emptying them… we've been very glad to see your reactions to all the new things we’ve planned for this last update and can’t wait to let you all get your hands on it!

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For those of you who use Amazon Prime Gaming, APICO is currently part of the free Prime games you can claim! You have until February 14th to claim it - once you do it’ll be added to your library indefinitely!

This is the same as the latest Steam / PC release, so you get all of the same nautical goodness.

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Coming very shortly after this recap, Whitethorn Games (APICO’s publisher!) will be having their Whitethorn Winter Showcase! This is a celebration of gaming magic across all the other sister games, so be sure to check it out to see what other new games are coming that might bee off interest to you.

There’s also a new Humble Bundle where you can get APICO along with some other fantastic games, all to help celebrate Black History Month and raise money for NPower, so if you’re still looking to pick up APICO as well as support a wonderful cause this is your chance!

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And that’s it for this first recap of 2024! Big thanks for your amazing support
Take care!
Manon, Ell and Jamie

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

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

Hi friends!

September is already gone and oh boy, what a month! APICO’s second major update came out - “What Lies Beeneath” :D

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What Lies Beeneath launched on September 26 on PC! Beekeepers can now explore the ocean, restore coral reefs, clean the seabed, fish… and, of course, discover all the new bees (including underwater ones!!). You can check out the patch notes here to see all the new stuff added.

If you’re a console player, no worries! The update will eventually come to you, and we’ll make sure to let you all know when it happens
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To celebrate the new update, APICO and its amazing soundtracks (I’m not the one who composed it so I can say it) are currently on sale on Steam!

The game is 45% off, and the soundtracks are each 50% off until October 10th ✨

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We experimented a bit with the discord server this month: after a short career in sending cute bee pics, beebot switched to beemojis creation. Some are cuter than others, but it’s a little surprise everyday!

We’ve also been very happy to see the players enjoy the update and sharing tips (and bugs) in the server, feel free to stop by!
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In October, we’ll join Frog Con, a lovely online convention for frog lovers that raises funds for amphibian conservation. In the middle or froggy cams, the artist alley and educational streams, Mudborne will take part to the con as a froggy game, October 13-23

Be sure to check it out, along with the other amazing froggy games we’ll be alongside!

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And that’s a wrap for September! We wish you all a good spooky month!

Take care,
Manon, Ell & Jamie