In case you’re on the lookout for an arcade-style shooter with a sweet-sweet twist then Ben Walter‘s Lengthy Stay The Hive would possibly bee the one for you.
Ignore my preposterous punning. Lengthy Stay The Hive is a stable little shooter that stands by itself with none wordplay. If something, it makes use of phrases in a way more intelligent, direct, and minimalist method: It shouts them. It doesn’t shout them as in ‘please flip down your laptop audio’. No, it ‘barks’ like a drill teacher, the voice in Superhot, or a hive thoughts would possibly. THE HIVE MUST SURIVIVE. It’s easy, cool, efficient and feels completely becoming to the premise.
Contemplating that it was created as an entry to the not too long ago ended Ludum Dare 56 — theme, Tiny Creatures — and was achieved effectively forward of cut-off (in beneath 18 hours) there’s really rather a lot going for it.
To play, you are taking management of one of many drones inside a stage, flying round with the WASD keys and firing towards your mouse cursor with the left click on. You’ll hearth small pellets of nectar (or honey or unspecified yellow blocks) which might clip off components of enemies or finally kill them in case you hit them on their core (pink) physique components. Most of them will hearth again, although, and your projectiles persist, cluttering up an already-busy hive.
Every of the degrees are generated as you drop in, with new enemy sorts (and higher densities of them) coming into play as you make your method by way of an increasing number of ranges of the hive. Map era and enemy distribution is usually good, though I had a few spawns the place enemies had been dumped in as giant stacks and even instantly subsequent to me. That mentioned, there’s a second of hesitation earlier than they shoot so you may usually scutter away from them.
One thing else that I particularly loved about Lengthy Stay the Hive was that in case you do die, you’ll tackle the type of one of many different bees littered across the stage. Nevertheless, these will be collaterally killed by the hive-invaders, so typically you gained’t have any lives left after a single loss relying on the velocity at which you goal enemies.
Lengthy Stay The Hive is accessible at no cost on itch.io.
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