Games Like Hivetide

Hivetide is an incremental tower defense game. You have one extraction rig, and a hive that moves like water wants it gone. We came to this planet for biomass. The insects under the crust live on the same stuff, and they noticed us. Each stage is a shift at the extractor. You keep it standing until it can be pulled out, spend what you harvested, and go back down.

The horde flows

There is no fixed path. The insects pour toward the extractor through every tunnel they can find, and when one corridor jams, the ones at the back go around. There can be thousands on screen. You choose where that flood gets squeezed and what it runs into there.

Towers on the rock, aimed by hand

Eight towers, and weather that picks favorites

Machine Gun, Cannon, Mortar, Tesla, Flamethrower, Cryostat, Railgun and Missile Launcher. Every world has weather that is kind to some weapons and rough on others. On the Surface the wind bends your grenades. In the Colony the damp soaks the powder but carries lightning further. The Royal Chamber is hot, which suits fire, and the Core's magnetic field throws guided shots off course. Each attempt also draws a weather event, and the weather can turn again halfway through a fight. A build that lost five minutes ago sometimes wins on the retry.

The ground changes under you

Four worlds and 40 stages, each on its own map

Surface, Colony, Royal Chamber and Core. Each world adds insects and towers, puts a mini-boss in the middle, and ends on a boss that has to die before the stage will end. Those are the Millipede, the Acid Slug, the Drill Worm and the Wasp Empress.

One stage in each world throws out the usual rules:

Many of the others have a smaller twist of their own, like a stampede of runners or abilities that stay jammed until the halfway mark. From stage 3 on there is also a bonus mission, such as winning without the nuke or leaving a tower slot empty. Clearing it pays extra biomass once and puts a star on the stage.

Four abilities for when it goes wrong

Missile, Airstrike, Orbital Laser, and one Nuke per stage that hits the whole map. You can pause whenever you like to aim them, move towers, or just look at the mess.

You get paid even when you lose

Every run pays biomass, win or lose, and so does retreating from a fight you know is gone. It all goes into a big upgrade tree with damage, fire rate and range for each tower, more tower slots, extractor armor, better harvesting, and the abilities themselves. After a defeat, the report shows which insect did the damage, which tower sat idle and how much the weather took from your best gun.

Bring a friend

The whole campaign can be played in two-player online co-op through Steam. One of you creates a room and passes along a four-letter code. Each player places half the towers and handles only their own, and the fight uses the better level of every upgrade between the two of you. Biomass, stages and bonus missions count for each player who already has that stage unlocked in their own campaign. The room stays open between fights, so you can both spend what you earned before the next one. Rooms have three more modes:

Siege

Build your own tide on a campaign map. You decide how many insects come, how tough they are, which kinds, and whether a mini-boss shows up, all inside a fixed budget. Beat it yourself and you get a code to share. Everyone who takes it on fights the exact same battle with the same upgrade tree.

After the campaign

Features

Discord

Talk strategy, report bugs and get patch notes straight from the developer on Discord: