Build a hive and make honey! This cute little indie strategy game is from Australian developer Cheeseness. It was released at the buzzy end of 2019.

Hive Time

Recently, we came across itch.io—to our delight, it’s a platform like Steam but purely for emerging and established indie game talent.

Better yet, many of the games on there are free! And that includes Hive Time, which we’ve really enjoyed playing.

It’s a short but sweet little management sim where you manage a bee colony.

The main goal is to get your hive thriving away before the Queen dies. So you must develop a nursery, research departments, and create foragers for your pollen, nectar, and honey.

On our first go, after getting to grips with the requirements, we were flying away and got several solid hours in developing the hive.

Here’s the game’s developing streaming post-release updates.

You can expect plenty more patches and potentially DLC as the game progresses. It’s caused a stir in the indie game community—as a small project, it’s always great to support these creative ideas.

And a lot of love has gone into this and it shows. From the way the little bees go about their duties, to the addictive flow of the gameplay. There’s much to marvel at.

Peter Silk from London is responsible for the engrossing soundtrack—a great Aussie/England merger right there.

Now, we mention that it’s free. But you can pay a small fee if you’re looking to support the developer.

It’s a fun and cute little sim game minus the full-on complexities of major AAA management games.

You’ll either like that or be disappointed. But for what it is, we thought it was immense. A highly enjoyable and engrossing distraction.