Beehaw has me thinking about bees…
Sim Ant was such a nice little game when it came out (yes, I’m old) and it ought to be fun to have something similar but with bees.
Does anyone know if such a game exists? I looked around a bit and found Bee Simulator on steam but that’s more playing a single bee, not managing the entire hive.
Might still be neat though even if it’s not quite what I had in mind.
Anyway, just… wanted more bees. :)
Give Hive Time a go. It has been a while since I played it in its early days but it was a fun bee hive management game.
The author is quite a fan of bees so I imagine he has done them justice.
Oh wow, this project looks like a really awesome management game! Thanks for sharing!
Edit:
Huh, I already own it without knowing it too O_o
I do that too. Especially with books. Start doing research for something new to read… finally settling on something that sounds really good.
Only to find I’ve already gone through that exact process and bought the book a few years back but never actually read it.
It was in style giant charity bundle. The game is fun for a single party through I think.
I just gave this a play-through because of your recommendation. What an adorable game! Thank you for sharing it.
That’s pretty neat!
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There’s so much more that bees do, too. Managing hive temperature (as to be exactly 36c), collecting pollen, nectar, propolis, and water, cleaning the cells, removing dead bees, dealing with infections, raising drones…
Bees are cool.
It really would make a great game. Pretty much Sim Ant on steroids… and with bees of course :D
My thoughts exactly!
How about Apico?
+1 for Apico - it’s a love letter to the minecraft Forestry mod.
Interesting, going to have to check it out!
I liked sim ant too. Also it’s amazing that the brain remembers those games still, it’s been like over 30 years… But they made a super strong impression at that age.
Maxis were pretty impressive back then! Pioneers really.
Yeah I remember everyone having a lot of respect and you would hear things like “it’s a maxis game so it’s going to be awesome”.
I wish I could go back to that age sometimes because I don’t get nearly as excited about games anymore as an adult, and that’s a shame. It was great to be really excited about a game like that.
It’s a hard quality to keep, things were new and exciting back then. We’ve seen so many games by now that there’s not much left to impress. How often does something truly new and ground breaking actually come around?
That’s not saying that there’s no good games any more, there are but most of them are spins on something that’s already been done.
But yeah… that sense of wonder and excitement, it’s a precious thing.
I only want it if it comes with a college-level entomology textbook about bees packed in the box with it, like SimAnt had.
I think I still might have the box and the book laying around somewhere!
I am confident I could program a game like that; but I don’t know enough about bees to make it half as realistic as Wright made SimAnt.
I also suck at art so it’d either have to use random assets or be entirely text-based.
See, now we just need a graphics guru and probably a sound person and we can have something going!
Maybe a biologist as well?
You should learn! Bees are really fascinating.
What’s really interesting is how the hive makes decisions. They have this dance thing they do to communicate where they’ve been, and how many times they dance tells other bees how good the spot is.
For example, when a swarm is looking for a new hive location, they send out scouts. Those scouts go out looking for a likely spot. They then return and waggle dance to describe the location of the potential nest location. The number of times they do the dance indicates how much they liked the spot. The more times they do it, the more new scouts see it and go to check it out themselves. They then return and waggle dance a number of times that indicates the quality. Scouts come and go, and the hive gradually converges on a particular spot. Once they are all dancing the same dance, it is time to go.
Itch.io had a big game jam on the theme of bees a little while ago so I’m sure if you poke around on there for a while you’ll find stuff that scratches your itch.
SimAnt was my gateway drug to RTS games like Warcraft II, C&C: Red Alert, and StarCraft.
Never thought of it that way tbh but yeah, it totally was!
Somebody make this, this is brilliant. I would buy this.
Isn’t it strange that it hasn’t really been done yet?
I spent so many hours playing Sim Ant as a kid!
It was so satisfying to manage to get the family to move out of their house because of all the ants too!
Yes! And playing as the spider, too!
That too yeah! :D
SimAnt was amazing. I just want it on GOG. :(
Yeah… it’s playable in the browser on a bunch of places and probably easily available as abandonware as well. But yeah, it’s sad how few old games are available for actual purchase.
Why bother making something new when perfection already exists?
(kidding)
Haha never heard of that one!
Sim Bee but their the alien bees from Doctor Who.
Sim ant soundtrack kicked ASS
Don’t really remember the music, I’ll have to look it up.
