Game Design Outline for Beekeeper Simulator

Team: Olivia Cahyono, Zoey Lu, Tara Brown, Tenzin Tsephel, Akiki Liang, Sacha Goldman, Ali Gencoglu, Grey Le, Salome Zhang

Pitch

You are a hobbyist beekeeper that dropped out of school to pursue your bee dreams, taking care of your bees in your backyard and cultivating a garden with their help. Raise and maintain bees, make sure they’re happy, and grow your garden with many beautiful flowers and decorations in this chill, laid-back game.

Overview

Programs: Unity 2021 3.16.2f & Github for Remote sharing

Platform: PC (Windows/Mac)

Genre: Casual, Simulation, Singleplayer

Buzz words: Cute, pastels, cosy, calm, slow, bees

Target Audience: Casual gamers, cute/chill aesthetic appeal

Story

You’ve decided to skip school and pursue your passion for bees! You moved to a small rented cottage with a shop on front, and a yard at the back with bee tools. Take care of your bees and try to keep things going.

Gameplay Essentials

   1. Main Gameplay loop

The crux of the game consists of the following gameplay loop, which corresponds to one day in-game:

• Receive anything you ordered in the last day
• Take care of your bees’ and flowers’ daily needs (water, enough flowers to pollinate)
• Collect the products of your bees
• Sell or make decorations with the products you collect

The emphasis is on intrinsic motivation, as such, money and progression mechanics take a back stage as opposed to bee and flower care, garden cultivation, and chilling in your garden drinking honey flower tea while watching your bee friends. (flower tea might be a cute feature)

    2. Locations In-Game

• The House
  • Sleep
  • Make tea

• The Backyard (Bee farm)

   3. Bees

Bees will inhabit beehives, which have a certain living capacity. Bees will leave their beehives to go to flowers in the range of the beehive. After collecting nectar, bees will go back to the beehive and create honey. Once enough honey is produced, the player can obtain it from a jar.

   4. Flower and Honey Mechanic

Bees will the player can unlock new types of flowers as they go on. Each flower is a little different and the number of different flowers you have will change your bees’ product! 

If there are many different flowers in the range of the beehives, the deciding factor of what honey gets produced in the beehive will be determined by the majority of bees’ flowers went to (ex. 2 bees went to daffodils and 5 bees went to tulips; therefore the honey will be tulips)

  5. House

There is a bed in the house, player can sleep in the bed to skip the day.

  6. Day-Night Cycle

There is a day-night cycle in the game that roughly corresponds to a single gameplay loop. You receive anything ordered in the morning, the bees work during the day, and go back to their hives at night.

  7. The Shop

The player has a UI that they can open at any time, where you can sell the bee products to unlock new flowers that make different kinds of honey, and some decorations if we have time to do that.

Other items to buy:

• Table
• Chair
• Kettle

  8. Base Mechanics

• Can pet bee
• Can buy: Flowers
• Different flowers could produce different kinds of output - each flower, one product
• Free form planting
• (part of the shop) Beedex and Shop iPad - Info on what flower makes bees produce
• Fills out as you use flower
• Split beehives when grown to a certain size
• Boxes in and out

  9. Stretch Goals

• Another kind of bee 
• Add stuff to do during the night
• “B” Mode (POV of a random bee)
• Honey Orders
• Flower Tea

Mood Board, Visual Research & Concepts