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Dive into the Hive Mind
Dive into the Hive Mind
By frank-gevaerts, balimaarthebassfish and Bizzybee
View on ldjam.com
| Category | Rank | Score | Count |
|
|---|
| Overall | 414 | 3.58 | 31 | |
| Fun | 384 | 3.45 | 32 | |
| Innovation | 474 | 3.19 | 31 | |
| Theme | 605 | 3.38 | 32 | |
| Graphics | 554 | 3.41 | 32 | |
| Audio | 345 | 3.43 | 31 | |
| Humor | 391 | 2.92 | 29 | |
| Mood | 620 | 3.26 | 32 | |
Comments
The artwork was nice; I enjoyed the fleshy organic look of the walls. Even the death animation had a lot of polish to it (and yeah... I saw that animation many times).
I was trying to kill all of the bugs, and several times ran out of ammo during the boss fight. It seems that ammo dropping is random, and sometimes you get less ammo back than you spend. I tried conserving bullets by using the melee attack, but I don't think I understood how to do it right, because it almost always got me killed immediately. I eventually won by getting a lucky run where I avoided shooting as much as possible. And I had so much ammo that run that I took my revenge on every last bug in the room. The revenge was well earned. After many, many tries, I had finally saved reality:
Screenshot 2025-04-07 201526.png
Great work! Also, hehe:
> and the sheer will to bee victorious
bizzybee
2025-04-08 03:45
@andrewkennedy Thank you so much!! Yeah, I too had the same issue with ammo/melee and we did talk about it, but ended up not changing anything in the onslaught of everything we needed to get done. I'm glad you showed those bees who's boss! Or I suppose in their case, queen? :P I'm so glad you enjoyed the game and again, thank you so much for the comment, it means a lot. Let us know if you end up trying endless mode, and how far you're able to get if so! :)
siilicac
2025-04-08 04:22
loved the honey comb hearts i thought it was a really nice artistic touch the constant but not too loud buzzing was a nice touch on sound design, i'm not one for challenges so i called it quits when i ran out of ammo at the boss fight but overall the game was fun!
bizzybee
2025-04-08 04:27
@siilicac Thank you! I was really proud of the hearts haha. I was delighted when I figured out one of the instruments I chose sounded like a bee when I oscillated between two notes on it, so I had to include that in the music. I really appreciate you taking the time to play, and your comments about the art and audio! <3
@andrewkennedy
Cheers for playing our game :) How did the randomly generated levels feel to you? Early on I coded the ammo loot drop to at least drop what it would take to kill the bees - which assumes 100% accuracy which is not easy. In the end I had it set so that 75% of the time the big bee and small bee would drop 1-5 more ammo than it took hits to kill them. Otherwise it would drop less. In hindsight I probably should have set the profit to be up to the max health value of the entity you were attacking. I spent a fair amount of time on balance and unfortunately this is something I missed.
@siilicac My apologies! I didnt balance the ammo drops properly. How dd the procedurally generated levels feel?
@balimaarthebassfish The procedural generation was good! The only time it ever stood out as odd was a time when the level was literally just 2 rooms with the goal right there. And I needed all the help that I could get, so I wasn't mad about it haha.
@andrewkennedy excellent to hear! the initial implementation of that algorithm was my work and its good to see it works well :) That scenario must have been one of the earlier levels where levels are kept smaller on purpose. We dont spawn many enemies in the early levels and it just made sense to make the levels smaller otherwise youre wandering around the maze for a couple minutes doing almost nothing. The algorithm also has its occasional quirks too.
To explain it quickly, an invisible walker basically runs a quick journey and where they walk unlocks tiles for the level. Where the walker stops is the room where the exit is spawned. So you might have had an occasion where the walker looped back on itself a little.
oxnh
2025-04-08 07:17
Pretty cool. The most fun I had was when I ran out of ammo and had to schmoove past all the enemies, I of course died on the boss stage on level 3 after that though. I thought the player animation was funny, reminded me of some of the goofy background animation from smiling friends. The game looks good, but all the assets including the text look pretty blurry in full screen.
bizzybee
2025-04-08 07:30
@oxnh My main method in many of my playthroughs was just running around the bees to the exit and seeing if I could make it so I feel you there haha. Were you playing the web build version, or the desktop itch.io window version perchance? I don't believe that issue comes up in the downloaded versions, but I'm curious to know. Thank you for your comment and I hope you had a great time playing! :) I'm so glad you liked the animations, I amused myself with the death animation in particular.
oxnh
2025-04-08 07:34
@bizzybee I was playing the web build so I guess that explains the weirdness.
@oxnh Yeah that's our bad my friend! We didnt test a web build at all I think until we created one for submission and at that point we only made sure it worked. Its definitely the web build thats messing with us here. How did you find the procedurally generated levels?
oxnh
2025-04-08 08:11
@balimaarthebassfish The procedural generation is sick. I didn't realise initially because I didn't read the description. Yeah +rep for that.
kamile-v
2025-04-08 12:18
thanks 4 the game! :)
@kamile-v thank you for playing!
nojoule
2025-04-08 12:48
Made it to the end after a couple of attempts. I like that you need to be careful with your ammo. Sometimes when trying to go around enemies, they can get stuck on you and i don't like that it's game over when running out of ammo, otherwise no real issues. Solid jam game!
@nojoule thanks for playing our game :)
its not quite game over when you run out of ammo though! the character can still punch :)
let us know if you give the Endless mode a go and see how deep you can delve!
great entry, really cool concept. Sadly I got stuck with an enemy that would not 'recreate bullet', letting me without any amo. Good job
@alexis-brochec Thanks for playing! Did you know your player can punch the bees? its right click with the mouse.
Let us know if you take on the Endless mode and tell us how far you manage to go!
The art, music, and gameplay are all very good here but the ammo system really stands out.
I couldn't get the punch to work and when I tried my controller it seemed like it didn't account for any deadzone. This could be my controller though, since I don't use it very often. (You can see me messing with the controller in the first few minutes.)
The ammo system forced me to try different ways of playing, which was awesome. I tried, and failed, just running around guys. Then I started counting my shots so I wouldn't end up with multiple bullets in the air that would disappear as they flew past a dead enemy. This worked much better.
The boss level was a nice challenge and again, the sound and art are fantastic.
https://youtu.be/Wwli2C7toz0
bizzybee
2025-04-08 21:43
@bangkerpow Aw, it's so awesome to get a video to watch! The punch is definitely difficult to use unfortunately, we just didn't have time to fix it up. Thank you so much for the compliments and I'm so glad you enjoyed the game!
@bangkerpow The controller implementation was mostly me, admittedly I did not test the punch and with that comment I realise I should have noticed that potential issue. I put in controller support and tested the game and immediately expended all my ammo on the first bee encountered. My guy thought he was Rambo with a never-ending machine gun!
After that I implemented a check to see if the player had actually released the trigger since the last shot and that returned the gameplay to "as intended" territory.
I should have realised the same would have applied to the punch. As it stands, youre punching once every frame (Goku has nothing on you!)
Thank you for the video and your words about the ammo system in particular. I spent ages on that part of the balance and its good to see it works!
I challenge you bangkerpow to try Endless mode and beat my record of reaching level 13!
How did the levels feel to you? They were procedurally generated and different every game :)
Very nice game! I never read the game page, usually I just eyeball it quickly if I see some controls I should know before starting. But I really liked that your wrote a short paragraph about you experience! It was very sweet, and relatable.
Over all I think the game was great. I didn't encounter any annoying bugs, the controls and objective was really obvious to figure out while playing - which is just great for game jam games. Mostly everything had nice sound feedback, the death animation was really nice and the screen shake felt good. It felt polished which is amazing :D
I think it would have been better to have the life pickups shaped as hearts, that is, in the same style as in the UI. It's nice that it feels grounded within the world, but at least for me I think it more important to make it super clear for the player what they are looking at. I also think it would be good if you couldn't pick them up if you had full health and just add some of feedback why it happened.
I missed the sweet screen shake when getting hit by projectiles, and a sound when actually damaging an enemy.
Lastly, to me it didn't feel nice to be out of ammo. Maybe it could have a slow recharge (say a bullet every second or so) so if you hade no ammo you could continue shoot, just slower? Or maybe add some ammo pick ups that are not you're own shots.
edit: reading some of the other comments now I see there was a punch! Maybe you could have added the control scheme to the left on the menu instead of inside help :P But maybe that's just my own fault
Anyway, well doneimage_2025-04-09_132619326.png!
Thanks for playing @bjornstenlund! We're considering a followup release soon, so this sort of feedback is very useful!
We're especially not sure what to do about ammo, as (I think I speak for at least two of the team :) ) I feel the strategies forced by having to go pick up ammo under fire in the boss levels do add something to the game, but at the same time it's true that when you really run out there's not a lot you can do (and to be honest, I don't think you missed much by not knowing you could punch. It doesn't really work well at all, and in hindsight I'm not sure adding it was a good idea). Slowly auto-refilling might work (or be part of the solution), We'll need to do some testing for that.
I see your point about rejecting unneeded health pickups, we'll definitely consider that.
There are indeed some places that could use sound effects (and maybe extra screen shake). I don't know if @bizzybee has time (and energy) for that, we'll see. I'll also let her respond to the health pickup suggesion. If it was up to me all those things would probably be squares of varying bright colours, so I'm not sure my input is useful :)
@frank-gevaerts I wouldn't expect you to update it (unless you really want to of course)! Our team mostly take the feedback to discuss it in a retrospective in a week or so. I think it's a good exercise for myself trying to find small things that can make a game better or solve some friction, so I tend to leave lengthy comments just for my own practice I guess :P So no pressure to actually implement my suggestions :D I think @bizzybee deserves a rest
@bjornstenlund I'm responsible for a lot of the balance stuff in this game. My idea was to encourage players to think a bit more like Agent 47 than Rambo – to approach situations with strategy, make every shot count, and adapt when things don’t go to plan.
I totally get that not everyone vibes with that style, and it’s something I’ll keep an eye on for future jams, but I wanted to share where I was coming from with the design.
Always open to hearing more thoughts, especially if there are specific moments that feel unfair or frustrating. Thanks again for playing and being honest with the feedback – it helps more than you know!
@bjornstenlund We're very happy with the game as it is, but it also feels that we'd be much happier still with just a few hours work on the code, and that feels worth it! Whether we also work on graphics and sound is a different matter, that's not my area so I don't get to decide :)
Very cool game, loved the color palette, procedural generation, and action! One tiny remark: I felt like audio spatialization (left ear/right ear) was a bit weird (if you're using AudioStreamPlayer2D, make sure the 2D source is at the correct position in the game!) Overall pretty nice job!
@thomas-bringer I'm away from the computer for a while, can you specify in what scenarios things were weird with the audio? If I recall correctly all sounds should be coming from their source in the game world.
bizzybee
2025-04-10 00:33
@balimaarthebassfish I think there's an issue with the health pickup only being in the right ear which I think was a mistake on my end, and the going down the hole sound only being in the left, which I'm less sure about without checking.
@bizzybee huh. I did NOT notice that before. id check it myself but since we uploaded the builds at the deadline Godot crashes whenever I try to load the project up.
I also didn't notice... I think I tested sound effects without headphones which was probably a mistake. They're just AudioStreamPlayer, no spatial handling about them (although maybe next time!)
fun game! i enjoyed the art style and music. nicely done :)
Hey, I saved the reality for you! It took a couple of tries until I started to be careful where am I shooting :) This was nice twist, you usually shoot as much as you can in this kind of game. The game has pleasant difficulty and length for the jam, thank you! I'm always happy, when I'm able to finish the game :) I also like the boss fight. Great job guys!
Thanks for playing, @takhomasac and @jiri-hysek !
I like the "don't waste bullets!" thing which I feel adds some strategy to it, but it definitely seems to make it harder to get into.
@jiri-hysek How were the procedurally generated levels? Spent a lot of time there :D
heviosso
2025-04-14 19:08
The art style is beautiful. Procedural generation -- cherry on top. Challenging enough, but not frustrating.
Thanks for playing, @heviosso! We're very happy with how the procedural generation worked out.
nice moody depths generated levels that were different every time. neat stuff I tried many a times before i could beat it. The worst was when i finally defeated the last level and the timer ran out before I could make it to the exit portal thingy. xd haha Kinda reminded me of dungeon of the endless.beatIt.png
Thanks for playing, @commanderstitch ! With this one the old thing about devs finding their own game easy really shines :)
@balimaarthebassfish Yeah, the dungeon generator is nice! My attention was overwhelmed by low ammo so I thought I just didn't remember the layout :)
helen
2025-04-22 22:13
Well done! It's fun to play - even when I ran out of ammo like all the others. Sadly I didn't manage to save reality.
Thanks for playing, @helen. The ammo constraint does make the game different from many similar looking games and takes some getting used to, and maybe things that take time to get used to are not a good idea in a jam. We still think it adds something to the game, but then that's us devs speaking, so we are biased...
It took me a bit to adjust to the scarcity of the ammo but after a few failed attempts I adjusted. Congrats on such a successful collaboration! Here's again my playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L29Qnx4_oTc