Fifth Update

The fifth update to the bee game brings a playable campaign, order improvements, new mite behavior, and fullscreen control.

Playable campaign

This update brings to the public build the first few levels of campaign mode - a series of timed stages with differing layouts and challenges, played in order. As you beat each level of campaign mode, you will be shown your score for that level as well as your total campaign score. If you manage to beat the campaign, you will be rewarded with a victory screen, and you'll be able to compare your final score to that of other players online.

The sequence of these first few levels is designed to introduce the player to new concepts gradually:

• Level 1 introduces basic gameplay.
• Level 2 is similar, but slightly more challenging.
• Level 3 introduces mites, and the importance of slowing them down.
• Level 4 introduces carpenter bees and "sculpting" of the landscape.
• Level 5 is a challenge level.
• Level 6 introduces giant hornets.
• Level 7 introduces pollination.
• Level 8 is another challenge level.

There will be many more levels to come in the future, and I'm sure the existing levels will be reworked as I receive more feedback.

Order Improvements

Bees now slow down a little when they are close to their destination. This should make the game less busy visually.

As well, when you "cancel" an order using right-click on desktop or two-finger touch on mobile, a small animation will play indicating that the order was cancelled.

A small question mark will appear next to bees that are currently waiting on orders (either because you canceled an order, or one has yet to be assigned.) This provides a visual indication that the bee may not be doing anything, like dropping honeycomb.

Mite Behavior Update

While designing and play-testing the first few campaign levels, I was disappointed to find that a level with mites but no cannons was very easy to break. All you had to do was trap the existing mites and the mite "spawner" in honeycomb, and you could then sit tight until the timer ran down. I didn't like this, because it meant mites couldn't be the only enemy in a level. In turn, that meant that beginner levels could be overwhelming with both cannons and mites, especially with the player's first introduction to the latter.

To combat this, mites can now get angry... very angry!

Mites that are trapped will start to build up "rage". When a mite's "rage" hits a critical point, that mite will try to violently clear a path for its siblings!

This creates new, more dynamic gameplay: since groups of mites can now clear a path, a cannon is no longer required to keep them "in play". And the combination of cannons and mites is now more formidable!

Fullscreen

You can now put the game into fullscreen with the button in the bottom-right corner. You can exit fullscreen in the standard way for your platform. (On desktop, you'll generally press Escape. On mobile, use the appropriate swipe gesture or "back" button.) Unfortunately, fullscreen still doesn't work on iOS (iPhone), although it does work on iPadOS.

This blog post corresponds to Alpha Update version 0.5.2.