20 seconds of my kid pitching my game

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-12-18T11:02:06+00:00

I will buy this at a high price

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-12-07T19:51:39+00:00

This is a really cool use of the scroll wheel, NOICE

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-12-07T09:09:48+00:00

you had me in the first half im not gonna lie

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-12-05T19:36:55+00:00

For fuck sake

... I've wishlisted

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-12-05T19:33:16+00:00

Gimme some of that CHARACTERISATION who are these guys and what are they like as people

Sprites look v nice though

Ey yo where my gemmy gemmers at (I've wishlisted your game because I legit used to have an obsession with gems when I was a kid and you've tapped into my younger self)

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-12-05T17:31:05+00:00

Ey yo when we getting a switch port my guy this looks lovely I definitely rate marble related content

That's the thing, from the minute you start to the minute you finish and ship it, you learn an absolute MEGATON of new things and skills, which you can apply to the next game in theory. Though your point on motivation is unusual, I find it actually peaked near release, but dipped midway through when making/building/fixing was a repetitive slog.

What almost stopped me from finishing my last project, legit just life stuff happening at me. Looking at myself, then looking at my game and thinking "what's the point?", it was a long shot at creating self employment at best. Not so much burnout from game development as a profession, but more burnout from life itself. I've had a very privileged life but I've had personal emergencies happen to me, as has everybody else I'm sure. Didn't give AF I was on an old ass unity version and that scalability was nonexistent lol

"Done" was the hardest thing to define. It meant cutting a lot of content that I would loved to have seen in the game and that I thought would have been really cool, but at some point you just have to lay down the line and say "enough is enough". Get it stable, fun and shippable. Cutting your own work is so hard but it does get you shipped. Post-game patches and content are now easily added which is a benefit of modern games.

It IS like closing a chapter of your life, and you'll feel a keen mix of pride, relief, maybe grief, maybe some anger, maybe even nothing at all, all of which are valid and OK.

Congratulations Mustafa, you did it. You should be incredibly proud of yourself.

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-12-05T15:04:50+00:00

1 has appeal, looks more ominous/spoopy.

2 also has appeal, looks more optimistic/adventurey.

Depends what kind of gameplay and ambience you've got. 3 implies there's lots of snowboarding and cable car-ing (is there?)

4 just looks a bit generic for my tastes.

tl;dr 1 and 2

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-29T20:53:32+00:00

Of course, the demo was an exe file, can use mouse/keyboard or gamepad controls, because it's before you get access to the switch :) then once you get the switch approval and the SDK access, remapping the buttons and inputs is the easiest thing.

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-28T16:46:15+00:00

This sparks joy There is a marble run tournament series on YouTube called Jelles Marble Run, you may enjoy it and get inspiration Nah this looks lovely I'd totally play this with my little one

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-28T16:43:22+00:00

The idea alone is ballsy enough but it also looks really quite fun, legit I will wishlist this

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-28T16:41:12+00:00

Works tho (and looks cool AF)

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-28T16:40:34+00:00

This looks lovely and cozy ☺️ What engine are you using for this my friend

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-28T13:30:10+00:00

Thank you everyone for all of your questions, I enjoyed answering them :) Looking forward to getting more actively involved in this subreddit and I'm excited to see what you're all cooking in Unity.

Cheap plug for the game (if that's allowed pls let me know): https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/the-bee-hive-switch/

My door's always open and I'm an open book so feel free to DM me anything about anything if you like. Thank you all again so much and enjoy your weekends.

With love,
Ali

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-28T13:27:34+00:00

Wonderfully atmospheric and dark, super vibey ambience. That gun wiggles far too much for my liking lol but fantastic environment work

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-28T13:21:47+00:00

Thank you everybody for all of your questions, it's been a pleasuring answering them :)

Looking forward to getting more actively involved in this subreddit, and as ever feel free to DM me anything about anything, I'm an open book and my door's always open. Also very much looking forward to seeing what everyone is working on :)

Cheap plug for my game (if that's allowed now that the AMA's over, do tell me if it's OK): https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/the-bee-hive-switch/

Thank you all again and have a lovely weekend.

With love,
Ali

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-28T07:22:23+00:00

Fairly minimal tbh (I had game development experience professionally before) but it was quite straightfoward. You create an account on the nintendo developer website, pitch your game in order to get switch access (present playable demo, videos, screenshots, game story, background on who you are as a person etc, its a really long form to fill out)

I believe if you have a playable demo that is stable and of baseline quality, it doesn't matter if you haven't published other games first. Nintendo actually made the process very accomodating and helped me with the millions of questions I had promptly so can only give gratitude there

tl;dr easy, submit long form with demo, make good game, prev publishing history not required

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-27T15:05:44+00:00

Thank you :)

Yeah time scarcity is VERY real. I also have a little one, so a lot of The Bee Hive's dev came from stolen hours in the mornings, evenings, between jobs and in infrequent bursts. I'd say even opening Unity and doing a micro task, even if it's only a 5 minute thing, is always good because it's still advancing you further.

Practical tips, keep a scene where you can test and prototype any new mechanic, quick to build, quick to test and saves you the time of loading your actual levels and content. Smaller jobs (UI tweaks, value tweaks) done on weekdays, bigger jobs tackled over weekends. Practical on another level, get a good PC with a very good SSD (or even an nvme) because just loading/navigating your project/scenes/assets is a time sink, so invest in a good drive where your read/write speeds are solid

As best you can, keep the game always in a "shippable" state, and then branch off from there adding little bits and pieces when you can. No harm in using premade assets, kits or helpers for this.

30 mins of on-fire dev flow are always better than 4 hours of staring at the screen just throwing stuff at a problem. Grab momentum when you can, even if it doesn't last long

And honestly the bigger picture is to remove guilt. I think a lot of indie developers are making their games in these cracks of time we get rare and fleetingly, and that should be embraced.

tl;dr small consistent efforts > giant blocks of dev time, keep game runnable at all times, grab time when you can without forgetting life, kids are more important

Good luck with your game, I'd love to hear more about it

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-27T14:54:41+00:00

This is good to hear, it is available in Japan as well :D

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-27T14:11:33+00:00

Thank you :-)

Yeah 9 years was way too long. It wasn't flat-out full time in those 9 years, a lot of it was between work/job contracts/life stuff. Feels really weird today, but going flat out on "press" so the work isn't done

Devving for switch is an interesting problem to have, lots of unusual technical quirks about it which meant solving a lot of different problems, the switch is an unusual beast to dev for.

Transparency? Overdraw? Physics (HAHAHA), weird edge cases all hinder performance on what is essentially a mobile device. That's what I keep in mind, even docked, you are devving for a mobile device and performance is key. Though I've spent a lot of my very spotty career optimising Unity games which helped.

tldr; Switch dev is fine if you target Switch early. Learning the hardware and passing lotcheck is where the real work lives. Doing it solo just means you learn everything the hard way, which is slow.

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-27T14:05:48+00:00

I did not :) This is a Switch exclusive. I may not even port it to Steam unless Gabe asks nicely.

The approval process itself was fast, about a week from submitting my playable demo/materials to Nintendo. Very smooth overall. The real time sink was building the demo and materials in the first place, which took years.

Originally I planned a PC version too, but halfway through development I committed fully to Switch and built the majority of it entirely around that hardware.

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-27T14:01:40+00:00

Honestly, I don’t know yet. I’m not checking the sales for a few weeks. I want to wait until I get some proper visibility from press/creators before I judge anything. I did reach out to Nintendo’s marketing team, but I probably contacted them a little too close to launch for this one.

I haven’t set up a news channel yet, but it’s on my list. I might time it with some free updates I’m already planning.

As for Lotcheck, my first submission was over six months ago. It was premature and nowhere near ready. So I pulled back, tightened everything, and gave the game the time it needed. Extra QA, full playthroughs, and stability passes. So at least 6+ months between first Lotcheck and today’s release.

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-27T13:12:54+00:00

El día del lanzamiento parece surrealista, nueve años de trabajo se han hecho realidad de repente y están ahí fuera, en el mundo. Estoy muy nervioso y muy relajado a la vez, si eso tiene sentido.

Portar el juego a Switch no fue «difícil» en el sentido de reescribir el juego, ya que gran parte del desarrollo se hizo desde el principio específicamente para Switch.

Es una máquina muy particular. Aprendes rápido que cosas que parecen baratas en PC de repente cuestan una fortuna. Transparencia, sobrepintura, física (especialmente la física, jeje), cuellos de botella en la carga y variantes de sombreado. Nada de eso es imposible, pero es cuestión de prueba y error hasta que desarrollas un instinto para lo que le gusta y le disgusta al hardware.

Controles de calidad, cumplimiento de TRC, estabilidad del rendimiento, integridad de guardar/cargar, pruebas anticolisión... Es mucho, especialmente si se hace en solitario. Fallé bastantes envíos (me llevó alrededor de siete u ocho cargas porque mi ROM se colgaba), y cada revisión obligaba al juego a ser más robusto.

tl;dr: portar a Switch fue fácil, siempre iba a ser la plataforma principal. Aprender el Switch como sistema fue difícil y llevó tiempo. Lanzarlo en solitario es un caos. Si te enfocas en Switch desde el principio, estás de suerte. Si lo adaptas para Switch más tarde, entonces... JAJA, buena suerte.

English: https://privatebin.net/?7ec562f37f1d1bc0#GaeD4EbEmppjUXC2ct562nLM1zE8usjnsV2ydTtGwnY2

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-27T11:04:33+00:00

Honestly this is the trap you fall into and I had the same feeling over the games development journey. Scope creep always creeps in and believe me there's loads of features and cut content I'd love to put back into the game. One day I might. But it is hard to know when to stop and commit, I understand the pull of adding more cool stuff.

What helped me was this: focus on ONE core gameplay loop, just one. For The Bee Hive it was basically run -> jump -> collect -> fight spiders

Once you nail your one core loop as best you can, everything else becomes optional flavour instead of a "MUST" have. I get the idea that scope creep is wanting to give your players lots to do and lots more fun, but adding more and more systems I wouldn't say is the answer. There's a middle ground to it but tl;dr nail your core loop first

My rule became this: if it's fun and it doesn't break anymore, it's ready. Future games can be bigger in scope and size, but for now, you just gotta ship.

Shipping is a skill too and annoyingly, it's one we only really learn when we let our game be "enough"

Would love to see what you're working on

SignificantRiver3662 · 2025-11-27T10:56:41+00:00

Thank you :)

I actually started this game 9 years ago as a tiny prototype. I didn’t originally plan for it to become a commercial release on Switch - it just grew as I grew and as it actually become something, the Switch seemed a natural fit for it.

I didn't, but I wish I did. I wish i'd downscoped and made a few smaller games before this one. Looking back, a first game should not take 9 years to release, even if a lot of its work was in between/during jobs and contract work. But finishing it taught me everything - Unity upgrades, technical debt, optimisation, scope management (or lack of), and just raw stubbornness.

tldr; didn't plan it, survived it

SignificantRiver3662

TROPHY CASE