Honeybee Harvest

hekateras 2023-01-09 12:32

Seriously cute game. At first I wasn't sure what the big deal was (I missed that you can shoot stingers at the enemies so I just kept dodging them and collecting pollen), then I tried attacking them and saw the different waves of enemies you can get. Really neat progression and the graphics are super cute.

smashcrate 2023-01-09 15:19

Music and art is really good. Really liked the damage mech where you lose pollen instead of lives. Good job :).

tory 2023-01-10 05:59

Screenshot 2023-01-10 095900.jpg Hmm, I thought games should be made in jam format and not a year ago....

bloodbane 2023-01-10 11:35

@tory: the pak runner is generic and has been made years ago but the pak itself is new and was made within defined time frame. That's the thing with using premade engine.

taikinaaa 2023-01-10 20:49

Great game!

marcoming 2023-01-11 16:30

Nice game, to be honest I initially completely missed the fact that the bee could shoot it's sting and just avoided the enemies, overall the game is simple but nice, good job!

milq 2023-01-14 01:21

I really want to try the game. But I use GNU/Linux and it's not for the web either. I have not rated it, if in the future they are published on these platforms I will be eager to try it!

deimos 2023-01-15 09:50

I like how the bee sting will damage the enemy as well as the flower, making you reconsider the timing of shooting. Neat little game.

edgeboyo 2023-01-15 14:44

I think I found a way to cheese it a little bit and make it a lot easier to score a high score :sweat_smile:

Ludum.png

I could have kept it up for longer, but I think the high score should go to whoever does it the legit way. Thanks for this submission I enjoyed it a lot, especially the music. I really fit the gameplay and I wasn't distracting like a lot of these looping tracks are :smile:

kirsten-lee 2023-01-15 16:13

Very cute visual style! Enemies are a bit difficult to kill, I think it would have been a bit more satisfying if they just need 1 hit to kill

duncan-3 2023-01-15 22:04

i like that there's two different bees to choose from with their own strengths and weaknesses

animawish 2023-01-17 06:06

Love the different enemy types, and always love a character select as well. Nice job!

pegasys 2023-01-17 16:34

I really like the cute art style + music combo and how it ties into your take on the theme. Who doesn't love bees. I found that it was a bit awkward trying to shoot the enemies, my shots kept hitting into the plants which seemed to have much larger hitboxes. I also found the one simple attack you get became a bit boring fairly quickly, the enemies do change but only slight changes to their movement. Overall though I really liked this. Great job!

retrisma 2023-01-18 00:13

The theme interpretation was good, and the art style was really nice! The music was interesting too. Unfortunately, I think the enemy and projectile hitboxes were too small, and the bee was pretty hard to control shooting the right direction. It just felt way too hard to hit the enemies. Good entry though!

honey-pony 2023-01-18 01:29

Nice little game.

I think the coolest mechanic here is the flowers. It's interesting to have an item that we are trying to protect, that at the same time can be damaged by us.

I found that the controls seemed somewhat sluggish. In particular, I would often end up facing the wrong direction when trying to shoot. What would happen is: there would be a bat that I needed to shoot, but I was offset from it perpendicularly by a couple pixels. So I would turn to move those few pixels, and then turn back towards it and start shooting... but my "turn back towards it" input would get eaten, and so I would fire the wrong direction.

Nonetheless, it was very satisfying to successfully take out enemies. I think I got pretty adept at the game by the time I stopped playing, as the waves didn't seem to be getting much harder and I would easily be able to survive large groups of enemies. Flying around to corral the enemies and then leading them in the correct direction to be able to shoot them felt good, even with my inputs sometimes being eaten.

I was using Lebi rather than Gawon. I actually had no idea that they had different properties, but I went back and checked before writing this comment, and I think I am glad I used Lebi. The slower shooting speed of Gawon would just make those later waves so much harder.

I do think that the scoring system does not make too much sense in the current game. Scoring is basically inversely proportional to how many enemies you fight. In particular, if you kill all the enemies but a single spider, you are able to score as many points as you could possibly want. On the other hand, in the later waves, it is basically impossible to earn any points while the enemies are alive, because the enemies will just destroy all the plants so quickly. So, spawning new waves is basically the last thing you want to do if going for score. I think that making enemies count for points could be a good change.

Similarly, in the later waves, the plant mechanics end up a bit less meaningful, as the plants are practically always dead whether you shoot them or not. One way to change that could just be to make the enemies unable to harm the plants--I did find it difficult to shoot those last spiders while I was racking up points, because they would weave between all the flowers. This was kind of a fun challenge. One direction to explore could be making the plants invulnerable to the enemies, and making them even more important, such as by making shooting them all dead result in a loss. (I have no idea if that would be fun, but it could make the plant mechanics more important).

I played this game for quite a while; I kept trying to see if the later waves would kill me, but they haven't had much luck yet. I've racked up 1601 points, mostly in between waves. I have found it fun to challenge myself with these later waves, as it is more interesting to try to dodge the big groups of enemies while still firing into them. There's been some close calls and other fun moments.

So overall, I think you have some satisfying shooting gameplay with some fun and creative plant mechanics, even if the scoring is a bit odd. :smile:

xedradryade 2023-01-19 16:39

Simple but efficient. Nice one.

caranha 2023-01-20 13:07

First, I really enjoyed the game, there are lots of things to think about here.

The AI feels pretty nice! It was fun seeing the enemies going after the coins or after the flowers before coming for me. It felt like a lot of personality there. Also, the idea of sharing coins/honey for both the hit points and the score was kinda neat.

The controls felt a bit sluggish. Sometimes it would hang when I tried to change directions, and I wish I could move and shoot at the same time. The enemy hitbox also felt tiny!

Also, there was a little bug/exploit, where you could leave one enemy alive and the next wave would not begin. So you could just pick coins in a scenario with lots of flowers. You probably want to take a look at that!

Thank you for the game!

dfaouaz 2023-01-25 09:56

Nice little game! Great job! :)