Zebees by Drestin

made by Drestin for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

Download!

(unzip and execute zebees.exe)

A beeautiful exploration game

Explore a vibrant world as a swarm of bees, for a peaceful experience.

There are hives scattered around the continent. Find them all and repopulate them by harvesting pollen to win the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJqeS8eqpqw

Install instructions

Windows

Download the zip file
Extract everything
Launch zebees.exe

Linux (untested)

Download the untested-linux zip file
Extract everything
Launch zebees.sh

How to play

You control a swarm of bees. Fly around in the world. Hold left-click to move fast.
Once you find a patch of flowers, release left-click for a few seconds to let your bees forage. You can see from their color and yellow particles that they are carrying pollen.
Then find a beehive to bring the pollen to (by releasing left-click). Each behive has a counter. Once you bring enough pollen, the hive is repopulated and new bees join your swarm.
Find and repopulate all the hives to win the game.

Quick controls

Use the mouse pointer to move the bees
Hold left-click to move fast
Release left-click for a few seconds to gather pollen or to deliver it to a nearby hive

The team

We are three friends from the same engineer school. Everybody contributed to everything :)

@Barbiche
@Roilbauk
@Drestin

Credits

We used the following softwares: - Godot 4 - Aseprite and Inkscape - Ableton

Font name: Karma Suture

itch.io	https://drestin.itch.io/zebees
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/zebees

Ratings

Overall	399^th	3.739⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Fun	420^th	3.609⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	147^th	3.913⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Theme	324^th	4.152⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	614^th	3.652⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Audio	395^th	3.523⭐	24🧑‍⚖️
Humor	672^th	2.952⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Mood	89^th	4.217⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Given		38🗳️	39🗨️

Feedback

GandalfsPipe

02. May 2023 · 02:39 UTC

Beautiful art and overall fun game

Tommeh

02. May 2023 · 02:40 UTC

Very cool vibes from this game. I liked the progression and the fact that there were multiple biomes. Nice and fun jam game. Really good job!

Ha-kuro

02. May 2023 · 02:41 UTC

ooo man love this concept! bumblebees delivering pollen~ ah and the mood in this game is perfect!! I'd love this as a mobile game.

10/10 will bee back again

brick2face

02. May 2023 · 02:48 UTC

I can confirm for you that the Linux version works. :)

The graphics and music were absolutely lovely, being a hivemind of bees has never felt more relaxing. At first I thought the clouds represented level boundaries, and I was delighted to find that there was a ton of other environments and graphics to explore.

Sounds for wind and buzzing would have been nice to have, especially buzzing that changes based on bee speed/activity, but the music loop was soothing enough for me to rate audio 4.5.

Aside from the gameplay not really having any obstacles (other than searching for hives and pollen, which is immersive and fun), a two big things stood out to me with the gameplay:

1. The "hive" counter is broken, it doesn't increase once you deliver all the pollen and it does its animation.

2. You seem to lose bees rather than gain them at hives, contrary to the description.

Regardless of the gameplay quirks, this game is beautiful and you three did great work on it.

helekopeter

02. May 2023 · 12:20 UTC

Cute and relaxing little game. Got all 9 hives. The only thing I miss are some buzzing sound effects.

batlen

02. May 2023 · 12:27 UTC

Really cool game !
The controls feel great and fit well with the relaxing / calm aspect of the game. The wind and floating petals are a very clever way to tell the player where the flowers are.
A good game overall good job

oscarglo

02. May 2023 · 12:39 UTC

Love the visuals, especially the background effects when flying in the different areas. The camera could be a bit less dynamic, it gets a bit too nauseating sometimes. Otherwise, great work!

Fernofai

02. May 2023 · 19:23 UTC

I loved the idea and the swarm mechanic, but after 2 hives half of my bees seemed to be stuck at some flowers and thus locked the flyable part of the world - maybe? All in all a very relaxing and satisfying game. Good job!

buloz

03. May 2023 · 21:44 UTC

This is so cute 🥹 I love bees

Devez

03. May 2023 · 21:59 UTC

Nice gameplay! I couldn't find all the hives though, I managed to find 6. I liked the wind shows flowers mechanic, wish you did something similar for the hives :stuck_out_tongue:

Emaigualmc2_art

04. May 2023 · 04:56 UTC

Great job! They achieved a beautiful and super relaxing atmosphere, the idea is also very good and the best thing is that they were able to implement it and that the gameplay feels very good. Congratulations! xD

nsadie

04. May 2023 · 16:54 UTC

Very nice! Movement feels really good, the mood is very nice and relaxing. I had some issues that after filling the second hive it did not trigger a new hive.

riley9

04. May 2023 · 18:24 UTC

this is a very friendly game, thank you!! i love how fast you can go and how you can follow the blossoms while flying against the wind to find new flowers x3

jk5000

09. May 2023 · 18:43 UTC

The game ran extremally fast on my computer, and it was therefor nearly impossible to play. But I liked the visuals and music was really good. I liked the idea, and if it had ran slower, it would clearly have been fun to play. Overall I will say it's a good jam game.

Prakkus

14. May 2023 · 23:44 UTC

A fellow beegame! Such a good vibe. Amazing job on the way the accelerator and slowdown of the swarm+camera feels. The grass ripple adds a lot and it really is fun to just zip around as your swarm of bees and then watch them spread out once you reach the flowers. All the different biomes...the way the swarm splits on rocks...all just so good!

I did find a hive where the flowers were right around it and that seemed to confuse a lot of my bees, but since I can ultimately control them it didn't end up causing any real problems.

Really great job!