MattDonatelli

However, we ARE planning on having more of an Arcade mode, where you do a one-off jump of a hive. These will also be timed, and you will likely be able to get the hive SEED and share it with your friends. That seed will allow you to actually compete with your friends to see who can beat that particular hive the fastest. 

This SEEDING would also allow for the implementation of a Daily Challenge mode, where we could build a global leaderboard of who beat that hive the fastest, or with the most kills, or fewest deaths. I really hope we have the time to do this kind of Daily Challenge mode, but we're still just focusing on the core gameplay at this time. 

I hope that clears up your question. While there will likely not be a specific "speedrun" mode, there will be more of an arcade one-off mode, and hopefully a daily challenge mode as well. (all timed and comparable with your friends or a speedrunning community).

Welcome to the Hive! You should start out by introducing yourself here: http://hivejump.com/community/categories/introduce-yourself

Pre-order alpha will be ready when the game is no longer in pre-alpha stage. This requires making all planned features for the game demonstrable. We're not at that point yet, but we're getting closer.

If you want to keep up with our progress, we post a dev update every month. September's update should be landing today, so stay tuned!

Thanks so much for your support! 

Matt

I ended up getting a job doing Level Design for a videogame studio in Houston, TX where my brother worked (inside connections help a lot in this industry). I had done quite a bit of level design in high school on various game mod teams, and I put together a portfolio and got the job. I worked there for a year before I decided I wanted to finish college. 

So I went to an entirely different college, for an entirely different major (Political Science), and finished my Bachelors in that field. After I graduated I struggled to find work for almost a year. I realized I didn't want to work in politics, or go to law school, and that I'd be much happier in my day-to-day life if I were doing something creative in the games industry. 

Again, I spent my ~11 months of unemployment / underemployment working on my level design portfolio and applying to dozens of games companies. Eventually I ended up doing some contract-basis game design for Graphite Lab, a local company in St. Louis (where my brother worked, again, hooray nepotism!), and via this contract work I eventually earned a full time position!

So yeah, that's my schooling story, and how I ended up in the videogame industry! I can totally empathize about not knowing exactly what you want to do with your life, but college teaches you more than just a skill to work at a job. It teaches you a lot about determination, meeting deadlines, socializing, networking, writing standards, etc... that all transfer into MANY disciplines in the work world and your life in general. 

Based on your love for architecture and game design though, I'd say you should see if you enjoy level design! Mario Maker is an amazing 2D tool that will teach you so much about level design through trial and error and experimentation, and while 3D level design is a lot more difficult, upcoming games like Doom 4 promise some amazingly user friendly level design tools! You should check it out!