Inside Social Games

Games based on movies can be quite hit or miss. Developers release games that revolve around a movie when the movie is about to come out for co-promotion. While I had positive expectations about Bee Movie before playing Busy Bees, the game itself was unfortunately quite underwhelming.

At first glace, Busy Bees looks like an interesting puzzle game with a unique core mechanic. You have to click on these little honey combs to remove them from the game board. When you do so, the bee in the middle attempts to move towards the edges of the board. If it makes it there, you lose; thus you have to remove the tiles in order to trap it so there is some strategy involved.

Since there really weren’t any directions other than the win and lose conditions, it was a little annoying to figure out how to win properly, but then after learning how to win I noticed that the AI for the bee is excruciatingly simple. It looks at the number of tiles to the edge, and moves in the opposite direction of where you click towards the shortest route. If it can’t move directly opposite, it simple gets as close as possible. While this may not be a 100% accurate assessment, you begin to see the pattern quickly and thus the challenge is completely removed, making the game boring.

In addition to the disappointing game play, Busy Bees makes virtually no use of the social capabilities of Facebook. In fact, as soon as you try to begin the game you get this message: “CHALLENGE up to 2 friends to beat your score!” That’s it - no interactivity, no chat, nor even anything particularly exciting for your profile.

In summary, the design needs work, the presentation is lack luster, the AI is overly simplistic, and there is minimal challenge. Suffice to say, the developers for Busy Bees were not too “busy” here (pun totally intended).