About This Work
"Flower → Honeybee → Pollination → Fruit → Dinner Table"
We made this game around the theme of this relay of life that supports our daily lives.
By tending flowerbeds and fields and growing crops with the help of honeybees, you can feel the connections in nature.
It’s a game where you work together with family and friends and have fun learning the secret of how our food comes to be.
Behind the Scenes
It all started with our amazement at honeybees.
We volunteer in an activity at our company where we raise honeybees.
Before we joined, we thought of honeybees as little more than "insects that make honey" or insects that help pollinate flowers and vegetables.
But as we learned about beekeeping, we discovered that honeybees are a very important part of what supports our food and the natural environment.
We were also amazed to learn that when flowers increase, honeybees gather; when honeybees visit the flowers, crops bear fruit; and that harvest makes its way to our dinner tables.
"Such an amazing creature, and yet so few people know how wonderful it is."
It was around the time we were feeling this that we heard about the Software Challenge, and we wondered whether we could share how amazing honeybees are through a game. That’s how this work came about.
In the game, you can’t harvest much just by tending flowerbeds and fields. We built in a system where honeybees helping with pollination leads to a much bigger harvest.
We’d be happy if, as you play, you could feel the relay of life
"Flower → Honeybee → Pollination → Fruit → Dinner Table,"
and the connections in nature.
Behind the Scenes
In the last few years, we’ve entered a convenient era where AI can help you create things.
"Maybe now we can make what we’ve always wanted to make." Once we actually started… Oh, it moves! Making things is fun!
But then came simulation elements whose behavior was hard to check, honeybees that wouldn’t flap their wings, mantises lying in wait, and buttons that wouldn’t respond.
It was a constant cycle of the game breaking after the smallest change and us fixing it again. Somehow, we got it working. Ha!
To match the concept, we were particular about making pollination necessary for crops to bear fruit.
The pixel-art world reflects our leader’s tastes, and we asked our artist to create it. It turned out retro and cute.
Our honeybees fly on our team’s passion, love, and grit. Please give it a try!
A Peek into the Game World
Choose a difficulty level and start. Your mission is shown in the top left corner.
Pull weeds and plant flowers in the garden. Watering and fertilizing speed up growth, and you can trade for saplings, too.
What the honeybees do next might bring happy changes to your garden.
Become a honeybee and collect flower nectar while dodging the mantises. When lots of flowers are in bloom, you’ll be very busy!
How much honey the hive stores depends on how much nectar you collect and whether you make it back to the hive within 20 seconds.
