Hivesters by HexStart

The Kingdom suffered its fair share of blights and plagues but from each it came out strong as always. Peaceful, and plentiful it awaits its next harvest. Nobody could predict what would come next, once resting in the depths of the earth. Now awoken... and hungry.

Hivesters is an RTS where you herd an ever-growing swarm of wheat-eating bugs. Attack the enemy's defenses at its weakest point to get to the tasty crops and multiply your numbers.

Controls
- Left click & drag - draw paths for the swarm
- WSAD - camera movement
- Shift - camera speed up
- Right click & drag - also camera movement
- ESC / P - pause menu (with a restart level option)
Created by
Together we create Tano Collective - Twitter, Itch
Attribution & Resources
Oppressive Gloom by Kevin MacLeod
Interloper by Kevin MacLeod
incompetech.com Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0)
Particles adapted from Unity Particle Pack
Bug killed sound, Bug eat sound, Bug eat sound, Unit destroy sound, Small boom sound, Medium boom sound, Big boom sound, Unit destroy sound, Pheromon sound
Fonts: Germania One, Encode Sans
Submission
Same windows build reuploaded 5 mins after submission deadline, as it refused to download from itch. No change to the build itself. Web build submitted without issue.
Note: For the sake of headphone users, we've uploaded a minor fix addressing some broken audio levels. The fix is present in the embedded web build and HivestersWinFix windows build. The original uploads remain and are still available for download, as the initial submission.
| Link | https://tanocollective.itch.io/hivesters |
| Link | https://tanocollective.itch.io/hivesters |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/hivesters |
Ratings
| Overall | 57th | 4.092⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 44th | 4.092⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 34th | 4.135⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 77th | 4.25⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 173th | 4.132⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 463th | 2.758⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 155th | 3.878⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 20🗨️ |
The game was fun enough that i wanted to play until the end and beat the Capital level, great work!
FEAR MY BUGNADO!
Great job, I really like the control mechanic, like laying down pheromones.
Moving by dragging mouse instead of clicking on a position feels original, I have no rts game in my knowledge doing that.
These towers and the music soundtrack reminds me a lot of 'Warcraft 3' haha.
This is defintely the game of my heart for this jam :heart: . Good job on this entry and great work to all of you ! :tada:
FOR THE SWARM !!!! :bug:
I don't like control bugs. It's very difficult for me.
Graphics is well.
Good job!
I can feel the zergings spirit here :D
## Feedback
### Game
Your gameplay is the same as the one of [Sea Salt](https://store.steampowered.com/app/983350/Sea_Salt/), but with much better controls!
I like it a lot, but both games suffer from the same problems, for example that controlling large swarms is frustrating, while it should feel empowering!
Small complaint about controls: I would've appreciated dragging with the middle mouse click, in addition to the right mouse click, it feels a lot more natural and similar to an RTS...
The atmosphere was great, and I feel like the game fit the theme very well!
Good job!
### Distribution
Thanks for **providing a HTML5 build**!
Since I am playing on Linux, I appreciated it!
Here’s the start of your game if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts youtu.be/OTjgGbVpf7g?t=6938
Great entry, really enjoyed playing! Congrats on making an RTS with so many levels in such a short time!
I lovee that burg disgin! soo cool and little bit cute too LOL
Thanks for make this game! LUV IT! Cheers!
While swarming was fun, I did find it worked much better to sneak past with a single bug to munch all the crops.
The swarms would be constantly be getting stuck on corners, and I had trouble getting them to attack the turrets. Sometimes they would and sometimes they would just stand next to the turret and get squished.
Could do with a victory screen, and perhaps a clearer next mission button. When they were all unlocked I wasn't certain I had done the last one or not.
Maybe some hot keys for locations would help trying to control many separate swarms at the same time? Or maybe if the insects had a little bit of self-direction (like attacking towers and food that is *really* close, but you could use the pheromones to cancel their instincs.
But you got a really cool idea here!
The maps were really well designed and fun to try to get close enough to the turrets with as little damage as possible. Had a lot of fun playing this!
Also the graphics were fantastic too -really nice job on this!
I was full expecting just another tower defense game but this was unique. It'd be cool to be able to zoom in/out with mouse wheel maybe, and to have more accuracy of the pheromone trail in the way they walk / follow the cursor?
Great stuff!
The controls felt nice for the most part; I liked using the line-drawing to lead the insects. I did find it to be a bit trying sometimes though, since I would often draw a line only for a small section of the hive to not follow in with the rest, or for a clump of bugs to stop part way through following the path. And because the camera is so zoomed in with no way (that I could find) to zoom it out more, I had to draw many lines which meant I was losing bugs left and right. I could herd them back in, but that would often mean letting my main group be a sitting duck for a few seconds.
I enjoyed the strategy. Scoping out the map and deciding which way to take my hive first to clear out various towers. Or judging which towers even need to be destroyed. Sometimes I just sent a small squad of bugs to nab a field of wheat and run. I wish you had made more "if A then B" type sections. There was one bit where I decided to go up a hill to take out a tower so it wouldn't be bombing me in a later section. I wish there had been a bit more of that sort of thing to make routing more interesting.
Just when I got comfortable with the idea of splitting the swarm into two sub-swarms to do two separate tasks, I got to the last level which put a stop to all of that. Because there's no way to zoom out, I can't really control two swarms at once. If I ever leave a swarm alone while I control a different one, it will be dead when I get back because of the long-range cannons that can fire from across the map. There's no safe place I can leave a swarm, so the best strategy seems to be to go forward, eat a bunch of crops, walk *all* the way back to collect the new guys I just hatched, then walk all the way back *again* to destroy the next line of towers. So that level was a bit arduous.
But those nitpicks aside, I had a lot of fun! Great work!