Five Cats Studios — Coming Q4 2026

Smoke & Honey

A Cozy Beekeeping Farm Sim

"Tend your hives, know your bees, and let the honey flow."

Godot 4 · Pixel Art · Steam (PC/Mac) · No Fail States

Farming Sim Cozy Beekeeping Story-Rich Crafting Pixel Art Relaxing

Learn More About the Game ← Back to Studio

What Is Smoke & Honey?

An apiary to inherit. A town to discover. A life to build.

You've inherited your uncle's struggling apiary on the edge of Cedar Bend, Iowa. The hives are half-empty, the equipment is worn, and the neighbors are curious. What you do with all of it is entirely up to you.

Smoke & Honey is a top-down pixel-art farming simulation where realistic beekeeping meets cozy farm life. Manage Langstroth and Warre hives, breed queens, track seasonal forage maps, and craft honey, beeswax candles, and mead. Build relationships with a cast of fully-realized Iowa small-town characters. Take your time. There is no timer. There is no losing.

This project has been in development for over five years, originally built in GameMaker Studio where the assets, mechanics, and world were designed from scratch. In 2025, development moved to Godot 4 — a better engine for the game's scope and ambitions. Five Cats Studios was founded in 2026 to take the project from passion project to full commercial release. The fast-paced devlog you see today reflects years of existing work being converted, reconnected, and expanded in the new engine.

5+ Years in Development — Originally GameMaker Studio — Now Godot 4 — Pixel Art — Top-Down

Years in Dev

NPCs

Quest Chains

Seasons

Holidays

Hive Types

Fail States

Welcome to Cedar Bend

Population 1,847. One stoplight. Zero strangers.

The gas station closes at 8 PM and nobody thinks that's unusual. The grain elevator is the tallest structure for twelve miles. The water tower says CEDAR BEND in letters that were repainted in 2003 and are already peeling again.

This is a town that measures life differently. Did the diner open this morning? Is the post office still running? Did the corn come in? By those measures, Cedar Bend is alive and stubborn and deeply, quietly proud of itself.

You've come here because your uncle asked. He keeps bees on the edge of town and he needs help. What you'll find is a place where help arrives before the need is stated, where Tuesday means pecan pie at the counter, and where the people who stayed have stories worth hearing.

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Main Street

Six blocks east to west. A feed store that carries everything a person actually needs. A diner that doubles as the town's living room. A post office run by a woman who knows every address by heart.

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The Unwritten Code

You wave at every truck on the county road. You bring a covered dish to every gathering of six or more. You mind your own business while knowing everyone else's. These are things nobody teaches because everybody already knows.

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Four Holidays

Cedar Bend marks its own calendar. The Quickening Morn in spring. The Founder's Beam in summer. The Reaping Fire in autumn. The Long Table in winter. Each one a window into who these people are when they stop working and start remembering.

Five Years in Cedar Bend

A story told in seasons, not cutscenes

You arrive as a stranger with nothing but an invitation and a hive full of questions. Over five in-game years, Cedar Bend will change you -- slowly, the way an accent settles in. Relationships deepen. Old tensions surface. The apiary grows. And the town that was watching you from behind curtains starts saving you a seat.

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Spring

The bees wake. Dandelions carpet the roadsides. Your hands shake the first time you lift a frame. Everything is new and terrifying and alive.

☀️

Summer

The honey flows. The Saturday Market fills. You sell something you made with your hands and a stranger asks your name.

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Autumn

The harvest comes in. Bonfires light the fields. Old wounds between neighbors surface -- and sometimes, quietly, begin to heal.

❄️

Winter

The hives go still under snow. Tables are set for whoever will come. Gifts are exchanged. Debts are forgiven. The world outside is cold. Inside, it's warm.

Core Pillars

What makes it special

Four interlocking systems built around patience, discovery, and the slow rhythm of a beekeeping life.

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Realistic Beekeeping

Manage Langstroth and Warre hives with genuine apiculture mechanics — queen genetics, brood cycles, seasonal forage maps, disease and pest management. The bees behave like bees.

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Cozy Farm Life

Seasonal cycles, dynamic weather, and a full farm-building loop. Harvest honey, press beeswax candles, brew mead, and tend a rural homestead that grows at your pace.

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Rich NPC Relationships

Twelve characters with histories, grudges, kindnesses, and debts that predate your arrival by generations. Relationships built over seasons, not minutes. Every friendship unlocks quest chains that shape the town.

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Peaceful Progression

No fail states. No timer. No punishment for stepping away. Smoke & Honey teaches through discovery and rewards curiosity, patience, and care over efficiency and optimization.

In the Hives

A living apiary system

Queen Breeding Selectively breed queens for traits like honey production, gentleness, and disease resistance. Genetics matter — and they carry forward through generations.

Seasonal Forage Maps Bees forage differently across spring, summer, and fall. Know your landscape, plant the right flowers, and watch productivity shift with the seasons.

Health & Pest Management Monitor for Varroa mites, nosema, and hive beetles. Intervene with treatments, or let nature run its course. Balance is everything.

Hive Expansion Grow from a single Langstroth to a full apiary of Langstroth and Warre hives. Each hive type has its own management style and character.

Honey & Wax Crafting Extract raw honey, filter it into grades, pour beeswax candles, and brew wildflower mead. Every product has a market and a story.

Farm Building Design and construct your homestead — honey house, potting shed, wildflower meadow, market stall. Build at your own pace, your own way.

Iowa Seasons & Weather Real seasonal rhythms with dynamic weather — spring rains, summer heat, autumn color, winter stillness. The land breathes around you.

Educational Depth Every mechanic is grounded in real apiculture. Smoke & Honey teaches beekeeping through play, not textbooks.

The World

Cedar Bend, Iowa

Millhaven County. One stoplight that blinks yellow after 10 PM. A grain elevator, a creek, a Saturday Market, and people who have been watching out for each other longer than they can remember. This is their town. You're just the kid who showed up. Pixel art, 32×32 tile grid, built frame by frame.

De-capping & Harvest

Hive Management

Bottling Table

Crafting & Storage

The Residents

Everybody knows everybody. Soon, they'll know you.

Cedar Bend's people have been in each other's lives for decades. They have histories, grudges, kindnesses, and debts that predate your arrival by generations. When you walk into this town, you're walking into the middle of a story that started long before you. Create your beekeeper, and find out where you fit.

You

The New Beekeeper

Character Creator

Someone asked you for something real. You said yes before your brain could talk you out of it.

Uncle Bob

The Man Who Called

He calls the bees "the girls" and the queen "Her Majesty." He'll teach you everything that matters.

Darlene

Third-Generation Beekeeper

Her queen line traces back to stock her grandmother brought from Poland in 1928. Six hives. No more, no less.

Rose

The Crossroads Diner

The social switchboard of Cedar Bend. Everything passes through her counter. She calls everyone "honey."

Carl Tanner

Feed & Seed

Third-generation store owner. Knows every farmer by name and what they ordered last spring. His bulletin board is the town's nervous system.

Frank Fischbach

Saturday Market

He'll tell you your first labels look "like a school project." He means it as actionable feedback. His approval means something because he doesn't give it cheaply.

Dr. Ellen Harwick

Extension Agent

Moved here five years ago and still gets called "the new girl." She doesn't mind. Trust in a small town is earned in decades, not diplomas.

June

Postmaster

Knows every address in the county by heart. Quiet. Observant. Unexpectedly dry-humored. Holding something at her desk that isn't yours yet.

Paul Rowland

The Farm

800 acres of corn and soy. Doesn't trust what he can't see working. A man whose language of reconciliation isn't words.

Kacey Rowland

The Next Generation

Carries the weight of legacy and the guilt of occasionally wanting something different. Your strongest ally.

Silas Crenshaw

The Builder

Built half the barns in Millhaven County. Quiet, precise, opinionated about lumber quality the way other people are about politics.

Lloyd Petersen

The Land

Protective of his trees the way parents are protective of children. His timber holds a secret worth earning.

Agnes

Diner Waitress

Brings your coffee without being asked. Sees more than she lets on.

Behind the Scenes

Active Development Plan

Five phases from prototype to ship, building on five years of prior development in GameMaker Studio. Every task, system, and milestone is tracked openly — from the core simulation loop already running in-game to the crafting, NPC, and world-building systems coming in Phase 3 and beyond. The rapid pace of progress reflects years of assets and design being converted into Godot 4.

Phase 1 Core Loop — “It’s Alive” Complete

Phase 2 Harvest & Economy Loop Complete

Phase 3 Living World — People & Purpose In Progress

Phase 4 Crafting, Brewing & Seasons Upcoming

Phase 5 Polish & Ship Upcoming

View Full Development Plan

2/5

Phases Complete

261

Changelog Entries

GDScript Files

25.8K

Lines of Code

📝 Read the full dev changelog

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Follow the hive

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