PM now Fully Open! Collector's Edition Mega-Upgrade and more Updates!
21 days ago
– Tue, May 19, 2026 at 07:11:53 AM
Hiya everyone! Quick update regarding the HYVE Pledge Manager!
For our retailers: still no updates just yet, but we’ll be reaching out directly as we move further downstream into production and have more finalized logistics and freight details to share with you. Logistics pricing for sending that many quantity of units will take real "leg work" from our logistics partners so we're waiting until we're sure it'll be the most accurate price possible.
Pledge Manager is now Open!
For everyone else, the Pledge Manager is now fully OPEN!
You should have received an email from BackerKit regarding your HYVE pledge within the past few minutes. If you’re new to Kickstarter campaigns, it’s vital that you complete this BackerKit survey and finalize shipping and any applicable taxes so that we’re able to ship your rewards once fulfillment begins.
Shipping for $999 is a place holder, don't worry!
If you happen to see a shipping charge of $999, don’t panic! That’s simply placeholder pricing that appears when your specific country hasn’t yet been configured in the system. Sometimes backers move countries after the campaign, or occasionally a region may have been missed during setup. If you see this, just reach out to us and we’ll get your country’s shipping configured properly.
HYVE Progress Update
Progress continues to rapidly progress behind the scenes! We’re currently wrapping up additional commissioned illustrations for the Coloring Edition, along with some extra bonus goodies and surprises we’ve been preparing for all of you. Not tracking these tasks super granularly, only really the milestones when we know when something has passed a notable milestone (the rulebooks are a doozy) and then when it is finalized (AKA "Done").
Legacy Mode got a Big Upgrade!
Legacy Mode got a pretty major overhaul! Huge thanks to Kevin for putting up with my last-minute changes! =]
Owen (one of Aerobellum Games’ lead developers) and I put our heads together and came up with what we believe is a far more compelling and rewarding upgrade system for Legacy. We’re really excited about where it landed and think it’ll make progression throughout the mode feel much more meaningful and interesting.
The Old legacy system had the same upgrades on the left side of the Legacy Sheet, and each would have to be redeemed in order to have any effect, but it never felt like you were getting more powerful as the game progressed. The new system gives you MUCH more in the ways of upgrades, options and abilities. Not only can you unlock 10+ new passive upgrades (4 unique ones being available per Legacy), you can also upgrade your "Bread Levels" persistently throughout a Legacy, as well as the "Courier Action" becoming much more developed as well, giving you the options to reclaim resources from the "Honey Shopkeeper" character (middle column) as well as being able to contribute to Honey supplies during a game. (Most other Honey "income" being earned either during Setup or between runs due to various metrics (all of which have also been overhauled and dramatically improved as well)).
These will be referenced in the rules, but the abilities on the left are "Beseech" (double your first Royal Jelly contributed per Scenario), and "Excisor" (allows you to X-out a single nectar during scoring (that might be a troublesome spot)).
This is a vast world of improvement from the prior system, so I'm stoked for all of you to get it in your hands!
Collector’s Edition received a BIG upgrade!
Dara Studios (our jack-of-all-trades, master-of-some business partner) suggested consolidating all of the Collector’s Edition add-ons into a single unified box. We agreed that if we were going to do that, it had to be absolutely “bee-utiful” and match the overall presentation style of HYVE.
So we put together these renders for the upgraded Collector’s Edition box set! Adding this super "deluxified" box wasn’t cheap and is going to cost us a few extra thousand dollars on our end (not including tooling costs!), but we think the final presentation is worth it. Our backer's happiness is truly our highest priority!
The image above shows the general assembly layout of the Collector’s Edition. The yellow sheet acts as a pack-list, beneath that sits the hexagonal dice tray, then the large puzzle, followed by spare sheets, and finally the bottom layer contains the additional dice, colored pencils, pin, and the rest of the goodies. All of Collector's Edition in one slick package.
And remember: you can upgrade your pledge to the Collector’s Edition within the Pledge Manager! This is a Kickstarter EXCLUSIVE, and won't be mass-market available!
Some Exceptions for Subsidized Shipping
We do need to apologize here a bit. We didn’t fully realize just how extreme some international shipping rates currently are — South America in particular has been especially difficult, with countries like Brazil and Bolivia standing out the most.
Our original plan was to subsidize roughly 30% of shipping costs across the board, but in some regions the shipping prices are so high that this would have effectively meant shipping the product for free, or quite literally paying you to take it. Because of that, some regions unfortunately need to be charged much closer to actual shipping cost, though we still subsidized what we reasonably could. These were edge cases only affecting a few orders, but still warrant mentioning.
Clarification on Different Types of BackerKit Surveys
Everyone who backed during the live Kickstarter campaign (excluding Late Pledges) received a message from my account after pledging. Those links mentioning “a survey” and “BackerKit” were actually tied to BackerKit’s live-campaign advertising survey system, which helps improve ad-targeting between BackerKit and Aerobellum Games while the campaign was active. Not everyone in the world is interested in roll-and-color bee-themed games, so finding all of y'all took some work! And BackerKit was an enormous help in doing so! =)
Now that the campaign is over and we are no longer actively running ads, that survey is no longer relevant.
The "survey" we’re referring to in these updates is the actual Pledge Manager survey email sent directly by BackerKit. These emails can be very easy to miss, so please check your SPAM folder and “Promotions” tab if you haven’t seen yours yet. =)
More News Soon to Come!
Coloring Edition is currently bringing up the rear a bit in terms of art asset completion, so we’ll have a more dedicated update on that edition in a future post once we have more to show off!
There are also some other exciting yet unannounced upgrades that we've got in the works but I'm doing my best to "bite my tongue" and not give away the details before I can be 100% confident that it'll make it into the final product. Only being 90% certain something can make it into the game isn't enough, we have to be completely sure! =)
More news coming soon! As always, if you have any problems in the PM please message my partner Logan ==> [email protected] or send me a DM here on Kickstarter!
--Matthew, Aerobellum Games
