Honeycomb Dev update #3 – Welcome to the LAB! It’s experimentation time!

Hey there, Explorers 🤠

How are y’all doing? It's been a great time of creative experimentation for our team lately, and today we'd like to show you the fruit of our efforts. Last devlog was full of building-themed stuff, and now I’ll take you on a journey to the world of bioengineering.

Before we start, I’m curious how you liked our new trailer. If you haven’t seen it yet, you can watch it HERE ⬅️

Without further ado, let’s get to the lab!

MECHANICS

We’ve already introduced you to crossbreeding plants and animals. Today, I’d like to bring you even more details and show unique experiments for Honeycomb. First of all, I’d like to show you three growing stages of plants and trees.

As a bioengineer, we’ll use three mechanics: Allogamy for flowering plants, Grafting for trees, and Environmental Changes for fungi. We must focus on the right conditions. Without them, the process won’t go well. Prepare your seeds, samples, and keep the water supply close at hand. We want our little ones irrigated, don’t we?

Allogamy

Now let’s focus on Allogamy – the most basic form of experiment in Honeycomb. It’s almost impossible to mess it up.
Why is that so? You could ask. Have you heard of bees and the amazing work they do! They fly from flower to flower, carrying heavy stuff on their little legs - they're the key agent in this process! Pollen, transferred between plants, can make new variations or species. In our game, it will look a little similar, but it'll need your assistance.

What you see in the picture below is a hybrid called the former. Formers change not only their shape but their pigment, parameters, and even their behavior as well. On the other hand, you have fillers - hybrids that only change pigment or parameters.

Here’s an example of the animation – work in progress! — and how the experiment will look. Let us know what you think of it.

But even here there are some restrictions. Allogamy only occurs in plants that produce flowers and are currently in bloom. That's your task to find the right one.

Grafting

Okay, guys, we've made it this far. With the basics out of the way, I can show you the next challenge. The following experiment won’t be that simple, though. This time, we’ll have to observe the results on our own. Your job is to place a branch on a tree grown in the lab and make a compatibility check. If it’s the right branch it will grow mutated fruit, but if it’s incompatible, the fruit will stay the same, and you’ll have to start all over again. Let’s assume everything went fine and jump to the final step. It’s time to break the mutated product into seeds from which new species can develop.

Also, enjoy our work-in-progress animation of the grafting process:

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE

Okay, now that the verdant world of plants is behind us, we can focus on fungi. Now it's time for and adventure. Gather some environmental samples, you’ll need them to make changes to the fungi’s growing process. That's the most challenging type of experiment you’ll do in Honeycomb. It depends on a few conditions, and you’ll have to focus on completing it correctly. Before you start, you need to change the parameters of experimental chambers for your sample to mutate. Otherwise, the mutation won’t begin – risk is an inherent part of change, after all. Let’s see how far your imagination can take you.

EXPLORE OUR MEDIA

Aaand that would be it for today's development update, Explorers! I hope you felt the vibe of what being a true bioengineer entails and liked our experimental showcase. Last but not least, we’d love to invite you to our discord server, which gives access to exclusive content we don’t publish anywhere else. Just click HERE or on the banner below to join! ⬇️

We’re very excited to hear how you feel about our work, so share your thoughts in the comments and let us know if you enjoyed the devlog! Remember to follow us on our social media and wishlist us on Steam for upcoming updates.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1510440/Honeycomb/

Leave the cradle and start exploring!

~Team Honey