Bee Kind: Design (The fun part!)

Once I had decided that I wanted to make a game about bees and planting flowers, I started coming up with what the game was going to look and feel like. I had some requirements…

The requirements

Must be a mobile game

Must be made in Unity

Must be ready for EGX 2018

Must be playable by children as young as 5 (low barrier to entry)

Must focus on education and learning

Must be fun and enjoyable to play

Must have at least 1 completed level

Must be tutorialized so that it can be understood by players

Must have a voice-over in the style of nature documentaries, to make the game more educational

With that in mind, here are the key design decisions I made early on…

The Story

The idea behind the game is that you are guiding a little bee through an unfamiliar landscape in order to find food for the hive. It was a very long winter, and having woken from hibernation, the bees are very hungry! Unfortunately a new housing estate has been built over their wildflowers meadows. It is the player’s job to help the bee find flowers in this new world. Each flower you visit provides a little food, but also has a chance of giving you a seed. Seeds can then be planted to give even more food.

The Bee Movements

In Bee Kind the idea of the game is that you guide a bee around a garden to find pollen and nectar. Along the way you pollinate flowers and find seeds to plant to get more food. Unfortunately, bees are quite awkward to design a movement system for because they move in all directions. That would be relatively simple, if I weren’t making a mobile game. I really wanted to avoid joysticks as they feel clunky on mobile. In the end, I went for a 2.5D movement system where the bee moves only in the x and z axis. Using Unity’s raycast system, players tap and hold the screen to direct the bee north, south, east and west. In other words, the bee moves along a flat plane.

The Planting Mechanic

This mechanic was a later addition to the core game design, because I wanted the game to really hit home with the idea that you can make a difference by planting wildflowers. As you fly the bee, some flowers give you seeds, and these can be planted to provide even more food for the bee. There’s a button which allows the player to switch to planting, and the camera zooms out to view the whole garden. Then, flower beds can be clicked and players can choose which flower they would like.

Once I had these are my fundamental designs, it was time to start prototyping. Read about that in the next blog post!