Level Menu Design

I'm starting to think about the menus for the game and how I want to present them to the player. I've developed a fun story line for the game (I'll describe it in a future post). The bee is a traveler so it makes sense to display the level navigation as a map. We'll call this world "Bee Land" for now. The player will travel to each location after completing a series of rounds at each location. I'm thinking that the unlocked locations will be grayscale or muted colors and then become bright and colourful when the player unlocks them. I had fun creating the sketch of the map. Today I'm going to create some more detailed art for the map and put it in the game to see how it looks and feels.

To display the players score and rank, I'm thinking a little note pad would work well with the traveler idea. I'm not sure about placement but I'll figure that out as I start designing the map.

Have a great day!
Melissa

Wild Wild West Theme and Art Style

I've been trying to decide on the art style for the game for a while. In previous posts you can see that the art has a flat vector look. Recently I tried changing it up. At first I was going for a crayon style but it morphed more into a crayon/pencil crayon/chalk style. This is inline with how I used to paint. I haven't painted in years so it was fun to revisit some techniques from the past. I like to lay down a bunch of different colors and then go over that with the final color while letting a little of the under painting show through. I really like how this looks for the game. It gives it more character and charm, plus it's a lot more fun for me to create the graphics this way. Flat color was getting kind of boring.

So this is the Wild Wild West theme. The player is a Sheriff Bee and he collects answers from the bank robber bees. They look so funny flying around the screen, I think kids will get a kick out of it. I plan to change the graphic in the top right to be a jail. So when the player collides with the small bees, they will fly to the jail. That tumbleweed rolls across the screen.

I'm seeing a trend that the majority of my theme ideas would appeal more to boys. I'm not sure why I've gone this route, maybe because I was a bit of a tom boy when I was a kid. I'll have to be careful here because I want the game to appeal equally to both boys and girls.

Here's a look at the Goodie Garden level in the new art style.

Thanks for stopping by!
Melissa

Matching Questions & Spooky Night Theme

Here's a look at the "Spooky Night" theme. The player is a vampire bee and the collectible bees are wearing ghost costumes. The game timer is now a setting moon and the bees fly to the haunted house in the top right corner when they are collected.

There are three types of matching questions. The first is counting. As you can see in the image above the player must match the numbers from 1 to 5 in that order. As the difficulty increases, the player will be asked to skip count and count backwards. This question type will progress to a "what's missing" type where some of the numbers will be missing and the missing numbers are what the player must collect. I'll show an example of this later in this post.

The next question type is alphabet. The player must match letters of the alphabet in order. It starts off easy with just matching the letters, but then progresses to "what's missing" as in the counting type questions.

The third matching type question is picture and shape matching. These are really simple but will give the player a break from answering more difficult questions. The pictures will relate to the current theme and there will also be the standard shapes such as circle, triangle, square, oval, hexagon etc.

Here's a look at how the counting and alphabet questions will increase in difficulty.

Have a great day!

Melissa

Spelling Questions

For spelling type questions, an image will appear on the screen and the player will be told "Spell This". At the easiest level, the word is spelled out at the top and the player must match the letters he sees. As the difficulty increases, the player will need to figure out how to spell the word without help.

Above are three more levels of difficulty. Once words are mastered the words themselves will get harder such a 4 and 5 letter words.

Here's a fun one. The frog rises from the bottom and floats to the top.

Have a great day!
Melissa

Math Questions

Here's a screenshot of the garden theme and an easy math question. We can use shapes such as squares, triangle, circles etc and also pictures such as apples, frogs or flowers. Each theme will have a set of pictures related to that theme for this type of math question as well as matching and pattern recognition questions.

By sliding her finger across the iPad or iPhone, the player will make the large bee contact the small bee that is carrying the correct answer. The small bees fly around the screen so the player must also avoid them until she knows which answer she wants to choose.

The next difficulty level replaces shapes and pictures with numbers.

As the difficulty increases we get into subtraction, multi-operator questions, multiplication and division. Another way to increase the difficulty is to have more bees on the screen. The player must avoid them and also choose from 3 or more possible answers. I've tried the game with 6 bees on the screen and it is really hard to avoid them but kind of fun. I may never go as high as six but if a player reaches the highest level for all question types that might be a fun way to keep them excited about the game.

As I mentioned in my first post, the game difficulty will adapt to the player. So they must become proficient at a certain group of questions before the difficulty level increases. They must also answer the question in a certain time period in order to move up. The player doesn't know this of course, they just play the game and don't have to worry about difficulty levels.

In my next post I'll show some of the other question types.

Have a great day!
Melissa

The Player

 In my last post, I mentioned that the player controls a large bee that flies around the screen and collects the right answer. I haven't given the bee a name yet, I want to think of something that could be a boy bee or a girl bee. Any suggestions?

The animation for the player bee is really simple, his wings beat and his mouth and eyes change.

While the player flies around the bee just looks happy.

When the player collects the right answer or a bonus item, the bee smiles.

If the player tries to collect the incorrect answer, a sound like a "BOING" will play and the bee will be dazed for a moment.

My favourite thing is that the bee will wear costumes!!

The plan is to have about 10 different themes for the game. We'll start out in a garden and as the player progresses, new themes or environments are unlocked. The player bee will wear a costume related to the theme. So here we have a pirate captain for the "Pirate" theme and a vampire for the "Spooky Night" theme. Is that an Elvis vampire bee?? Some of the other themes I'm thinking of are outer space, super hero, candy land, fairy tale, Christmas, circus, western, valentine, robot and dinosaur to name a few. It will be hard to pick which ones to go into the game because I want to draw them all. I want to do a "ZomBEE" theme so bad! Mostly because I love the play on the word zombie. But sketches I did of this theme are kinda scary and I don't want to freak out the kiddies so we'll have to see about that one.

Thanks for stopping by!
Melissa

Bee's Knees The Game

• I’m so excited to finally get started on my development blog for Bee’s Knees! For my first post I thought I should explain the game to you.

  You are a bee in a garden. Suddenly a question appears at the top of the screen. Then some smaller bees fly on screen and they are carrying possible answers to the question. By sliding your finger across your iPad or iPhone you move your bee to the smaller bee that is carrying the answer you think is correct. If you are right, you collect that bee, he flies to the hive at the top right of the screen and your score increases. If you are wrong, the small bee turns and bolts and you must try again until you find the right answer.

  The game is timed. The sun will slowly move down the screen and when it sets, your time is up. You can add time to the sun by answering a question without making a mistake. 

  So that is the basic gist of the game. There are many other aspects to it that make it fun but I don’t want to overwhelm you with too much info to start.

  One thing I’m really excited about is the game will adapt to the skill level of the player. I’m working on an algorithm that will determine the player’s abilities in math, spelling and problem solving while they play the game and then it will adjust the difficulty accordingly. Originally I had planned to have the player choose their skill level, such as Kindergarten, Grade 1, Grade 2 etc but I don’t want to place the kids in boxes and not challenge them enough because of what I think a grade 1 student should or shouldn’t know. This will make the game really flexible and any kid in any country should be able to play it and have fun and be challenged. So that is my big task at the moment, figuring out this algorithm.

  The other thing that I think will make this game fun is the variety of question types that will be presented to the player. There will be shape and picture matching, counting, abcs, 123s, math, inequalities, pattern recognition, spelling and word recognition. I’ll show you examples of these in upcoming posts.

  Oh ya, I should mention that I do my sketching on my iPad using an app called Paper. I love it for doing quick sketches and it’s really fun to draw with my finger, LOL! Makes me feel like a kid again and puts me in the right frame of mind to work on the game. So don’t expect any polished sketches, everything I do will be quick and dirty and right to the point. I will definitely show final artwork as I finish it so you can have an idea of how the game will look.

  Thanks for stopping by!
  Melissa 

  Here’s a link to Paper if you are curious about the sketching app I use: http://www.fiftythree.com/paper