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GOL Cast: Being Part of the Bug Community in Hive

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Working on these GOL Casts has allowed me to take a look at various games with different genres. Today we can add a new type of a game to the list as we check out this strategy game, which is originally based on a board game, called Hive.

Hive is a board game-like strategy game developed by BlueLine Game Studios. It is based on a board game with the same name and also plays out similarly. Your goal is to capture the enemy queen bee and prevent your opponent from doing the same to your queen. To do this you must use your set of different types of bugs, which behave differently, to bind the enemy bugs in place and to surround the enemy queen.

The game sounds very simple, but like in many boardgames you must follow a strict set of rules that govern whether or not a bug can move at all and where it can move. Because of this you must carefully plan which bugs to use in certain situations and you can quickly get screwed over by overlooking a rule that applies to the situation.

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Oh, and by the way, we have a monetization permission from BlueLine. Take that YouTube!

I am not used to playing board game-like games on my computer, apart from obvious games chess and the likes, but I have enjoyed playing Hive during the past weeks. The game's AI and rule set give me a big enough challenge to keep the game interesting and it can be played in short bursts as a single game against the AI rarely takes more than 10 minutes.

The game was a bit hard to get into initially, because you have to understand the rules before you can start to enjoy the game, so I advice you to read through the rulebook in the main menu before diving into the game. Once you understand what goes where and why, you can start playing the game properly. I originally felt too lazy to go through the whole rule book and started playing without understanding much, but I eventually learned how the game works by trial and error. A tutorial would have probably been a nice addition.

So overall I think the game is neat and offers good entertainment especially when you only have limited amount of time to play. It isn't very action-packed however, so you should probably ask yourself whether you like boardgames or not before buying the game.

Hive on Humble Store: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/hive_storefront

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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I'm a Linux gamer from Finland. I like reading, long walks on the beach, dying repeatedly in roguelikes and ripping and tearing in FPS games. I also sometimes write code and sometimes that includes hobbyist game development.
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2 comments

Gobo Jun 2, 2014
There are quite a number of tutorial videos available online, that should get everyone up to speed.

I really like dynamic playfield boardgames and Hive looks very interesting. But as you stated, the implementation lacks some polish.

And playing boardgames on a computer or other gaming gear is lots of fun, especially when it comes to games with complex rulesets which the ai is going to handle for you. I recommend Carcassonne (playable online in a Java enabled browser, e.g. at http://brettspielwelt.de/Spiele/Carcassonne/?nation=en ) and there are several different games of Settlers of Catan available for Linux as well.
Samsai Jun 3, 2014
Quoting: GuestCurrently on sale for 3€ on the Humble store. I bought it, works fine on Arch Linux 64 bit / Xfce / alsa / nvidia. Not really interested by the game though, I prefer simpler games, but who knows I might change my mind one day.

Something the article does not mention is there is an online play mode.
Thanks for reminding me about the Humble version. I completely forgot it and believed it was a Steam-only release. Added the link for it in the article.

I mentioned the online support on the video. I usually offer only the most important aspects of the game in the article and the video has all the details.
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