Well here we are everyone, a new shiny demo for #WorldBeeDay!

This is the first time you'll be able to experience the game since it was moved from a custom JavaScript engine to GameMaker Studio 2, and there's just so many new tweaks or QoL changes that it'd be hard to list them all (but Hivemother be damned we're going to try). It's worth noting being a new engine it uses a new save system, so your old demo save will no longer be playable (the save-1.bees file is still there but GameMaker won't read it!!)

If you find any bugs please report them over on our Bug Reports forum, and if you have any feedback we'd love to hear it over on our Guilded Community

We hope you enjoy, we've put a lot of work into this new version and we're really proud of it and can't wait for you to get your hands on it!!<3

Changes

General

• Performance should be noticeably better on old machines and run at a silky smooth 60fps thanks to GameMaker
• In general a lot of things should work better with the menus + UIs
• You can now customise your characters hair and outfit on starting a new game!
• Re-named the in-game currency to RUBEES

Items

• YOU CAN FINALLY PLACE STUFF WITHOUT EQUIPPING IT!!! Yes you read that right
• You can also pick up tools and use them on stuff with the mouse without equipping them
• You can now drop stuff with right-click!!! (high quality features here guys I know)
• Items have a much larger pickup radius so you don't have to get as close to them
• Items will yeet themselves towards you when you're close to them, magnet style

Cross-breeding & Bees

• Fixed various bees to quite working at the right time
• The Predictor is easily craftable from the start of the game to help understand the cross-breeding mechanics
• Cross-breeding chances are much kinder early on
• Each bee species now has a 'conversation status', which is improved the more you breed that species or release those bees back into the wild with a Rehabeelitator
• You can now 'ferment' your honey into mead! You can then bottle this mead to sell for a phat profit, or infuse the mead to grant special effects when you drink it (speed up, night vision, etc)
• All new bees have a chance to be a 'shiny' variant

Books

• A bunch of quests have been made less wordy 
• Notifications for quests open the quest book and scroll to the right chapter for you
• The bee book is introduced earlier so you don't need to get your first hybrid before getting it
• The bee book has a bunch of new info, covering conservation status and special produce
• There's now a sweet new animation when discovering a new bee! (pls enjoy it took so long)
• The Predictor is introduced around the same time to make the first hybrid easier

Saves

• Games take much quicker to load and save
• Floppy disk save icon is back in-game <3333
• World generation is much quicker in general
• Game saves are pre-loaded on game start so if you pick the same save as the preloaded one it'll start the game instantly!

Town

• You can hammer all the objects and tiles/walls in the town! Something, something great power great responsibility
• You can "pick up" npcs and bring them with you! Try not to lose them eh?
• Tweaked the stuff that Skipper sells to cover some of the new features

World

• Highlighted objects are shown even behind other objects with a little ghosting effect
• Better shore generation around islands
• Better lighting in day/night
• Added sunrise + sunset glow to dawn/dusk to help emphasise those times
• Added water reflections, because shaders are freaking awesome
• Flowers now spread as seedlings that grow into flowers - introduces seeds earlier
• Flowers now don't spread into yo damn house

Critters

• Birbs are no longer horrendously laggy or stupid
• Birbs can spawn in shallows now, but as lil seagulls!
• Birbs can be scared away by dropping sticks (as promised, finally the guide is no longer lying)

UI

• You can now spam click slots and it doesn't sometimes magically lose items, what a treat
• Removed aspect ratio options - game fully resizes to the window whatever the size
• Removed scale options - same as above (displays over 1920 will go to 3x scale instead of 2x automatically, displays over 3000 will go to 4x scale)
• Menus now have lil open animations, cute!
• You can now preview tank amount when hovering over machines, preview item when hovering over crates, and preview queen when hovering over hives
• You can view the contents of a crate without opening it by shift-hovering over it!
• Added back the move 'button', as an alternative to the move "bar"
• Inventory has number "labels" for the hotbar
• A lot better "error" states for the mouse hover or item usage, should be much clearer what you can and can't do (and why)
• Control mapping is less buggy

Controls

• There's now game controller support! This has been tested with PS4 and Xbox360 official controllers - there is a known issue with Xbox One controllers. Just plug in your controller and it'll switch over, although we recommend having it in before starting the game and avoid switching between gamepad + mouse/keyboard
• Using a controller changes the game to "focus" mode - you can't open 100s of menus together but it should be a much more chill and easy experience now when using a gamepad

Bug Fixes

• Many
• So many oh my god every day new bugs

Bug Additions

• Lots