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