Random events mid battle is not something I (and i know for a fact) or the rest of my team want to add to the game.
We had the honeys have a random chance of being picked up instead of a 2 second delay and the delay was just a better for gameplay.
If we do stages we might add challenge stages, but thats if we do stages.
and again repeated ideas are fine. it lets me know more people think X should happen.
Cool to know, genuinely wish I knew that when I was trying the harder difficulties. Just ended up handicapping myself trying to save pollen.
So regardless of how much these suggestions get implemented, if and when Honeycombat 2.0 happens, I think a ‘Sandbox’ mode of sorts would be great for people trying out different strategies or who are just looking to watch cute bees pummel each other. Maybe as a reward or just a default feature.
Yeah one of the things I think i would have is a mode where you can pick what units the enemy will have and what % they can show up at. But i will do this if i add a few other things that way it would be easier to make.
I’m loving the game so far, excellent work, and here’s a few suggestions:
•”Bouncer” unit that is a bee with an exceptionally large bust; the Bouncer bounces the first enemy she encounters clear out of the map for an instant kill, but in the process falls and becomes immobilized, functioning as a very weak wall with poor HP. Essentially a way to quickly get rid of a troublesome frontliner at the cost of also losing the unit.
•”Bad” honey that can be dropped onto an enemy bee to temporarily bloat and slow her down, at the cost of also slowing your own bees if it hits one of them.
•”Harvester” unit that is a small, spritely bee who begins flying aimlessly above the battlefield when created; when pollen clouds appear, a Harvester will instantly rush over and consume it, growing larger. If a Harvester is bumped into by the player character, she will immediately revert to a basic bee, fall to the ground, and the player gains 1.5x the pollen she consumed. However, if a Harvester is allowed to grow too full and bloated, she’ll instead drop like a lead weight and deal heavy damage to any enemy below her before collapsing and forfeiting the stored pollen,
First of all, I loved your submission, it was very well put together and felt pretty intuitive. Though having an explanation for all the different bee types in game would probably be helpful.
My advice though, if you’re looking to add content start with figuring out how you want to expand the base game. Do you want to just add things to the original stage, or make actual levels that increase in difficulty? Or does this new content look more like a sandbox mode?
How you would go about implementing new content will likely end up influencing what kind of content to add.
Also while I recognize adding additional sprite assets is not easy, I’d definitely recommend at least having different queen appearances.
Shame about the ‘no boom’ rule, but fair enough, hardly a common preference. Would still argue it might be a fun unit concept.
Might be the longest shot imaginable so more than likely unfeasible, but possibility of other hive-based factions, wasps and ants? Doubtful, especially considering complexity in making/animating sprites.
Maybe a shorter, but still chunky ‘assassin’? Low health, D.o.T. on hit and occasionally jumps back after a few seconds to decrease likelyhood of being targeted in melee?
Regardless of what happens, hoping your team decides to continue development.
We were actually thinking of adding ants as the main enemy faction, but we obviously couldn’t manage it with the time constraints. If it were only up to me, I’d make the enemies honey pot ants that want to steal our faction’s honey.
I won’t say anything, but I’ve noticed several people calling for Assasin/stealth bees
There was actually an ‘info’ button at the main menu that served as a little tutorial and also explained the bee types. Maybe you did see it but wanted a more formal explanation?
Also, do you mean queen appearances as in different skins or outfits for the queen?
Oh that’s on me I didn’t see that when I played, I’m sure what you had was fine.
I mean like different skins, outfits probably don’t matter really. Just something that makes them look more distinct. Ideally if they gained differently or looked different that’d be awesome but it’d likely be easier to just keep the main body and change small things about the appearance.
Yeah I could see an assassin bee working. Rubbish if caught on the front line or by a defensive unit but does heavy damage to artillery and queens.
With an expansion to the roster of units, might we have a story mode of sorts? With our queen striving to be the biggest and best, she opposes all other hives in the area so that she alone rules the Flower Fields! You can have different levels offering different unit compositions so that the player’s tactics will need to adapt from level to level. This would also support a slow burn of our queen starting smaller and bulking up over the course of the story as she realizes her goal.
I’ll also echo the general sentiments for more queen love. I just want to see her greedily sucking down more by honey like her pic in the manual suggests!
I am glad this project might get more content, because the jam submission was already very polished and tight for something with such an unforgiving timeframe. I will echo everyone else that unit upgrades would be nice. On a lizard-brain level I am partial to the idea of it happening by feeding an already upgraded unit honey, because then thing that got big once get even bigger, before my eyes.
I will defend multiple doses of honey to the same unit makes the strategic part of the game a little more interesting too, though. I found that my units would bunch up at the enemy, accumulate damage at the same rate, and then die in relatively rapid succession, so that if I had a new unit to upgrade, I often wanted them upgraded and at the front lines as fast as possible. The upgrade animation that the unit went through often let the enemy advance and lost me precious space on the ground that I would then have to fight to regain. Making the upgraded unit require another upgrade animation beyond the initial one would make the time management more interesting at higher difficulties, in that you only do it when you can form a safe bulwark to upgrade.
On a related note, talking about unit speed, I wonder if there could be a type of honey, relatively expensive in terms of pollen, which does not upgrade or enhance a unit aside from making it move faster? Effectively, an “oh shit, the front line broke, get this cannon fodder out there to hold the line” button for people who have a pollen excess at the right time.
Amon
I would suggest upgrading the ui, if you are going to add more fighters, upgrade tab, etc. then the ui might need a revise to be smaller.
As the bee that drops honey (forgor), she is quiet slow and i always thought the enemy queen would randomly upgrade, which is why i suggest a lvl based system for the healthbar, the cover of it might go from cloth to metal as the queen goes bigger.
The queen upgrade system is also very easy, so i thought of some special pollen that would drop off some special enemies or would pop out randomly, shortly, make harder to get. Maybe even make special units that cost 1000 pollen that would slowly collect the rare pollen\honey to be given or collected for making special honey.
One thing i remember from an old flash game of the same base defence genre, is that it had turrets to protect the base, all those bees, upgrades everyone mentioned might be of the blitzkrieg strategy, so some stationary defence would fit.
That’s all for the great game you made, i dunno if that’s gibberish, but i’ve said what i said.
-Gus
In order; Noice! Also, props for the type of ant used, but out of curiosity do you think other types of ant could serve as various types of specialised troops? Bullet ants living up to their name, Fire ants bathing the player’s troops in a weak but A.o.E. stream of flame, things like that? Just curious.
If you decide to make such a unit, looking forward to seeing how she turns out. Noticed the units thus far haven’t used their stingers though, so wonder if such a unit might end up using it, since ‘poison’ and all that.
well im back again with more bargain bin suggestions since apparently i keep generating low res ideas.
so like i said with the previous post, including some form of cosmetic look to change up how the bees themselves look would be neat to have.
with the main troops you could add a set of color palettes we can swap around to change how the bees look, like a palette that shifts yellows to reds or one that shifts the black stripes and armors to be grey, white, or even orange.
with the main player controlled character the centurion, you could include some small hat replacements that swap out the head sprite for other hats or a no-hat variant.
aside from that for the centurion you could add costumes to change her appearance like ones that make her look like the units, but that could be troublesome since the large overcoat the centurion wears doesn’t have any limbs beneath it.
aside from that the only other characters you could make a proper costume for is scout and the queen.
mostly the queen since they would get more mileage due to obvious reasons and a few interesting costumes could be made.
like just putting the queen in normal-ish clothing.
aside from cosmetic ideas, one other idea could be expanded is what Riko said with the 3rd party acting as a kinda shop.
if you wanted a 3rd party to act as a shopkeeper you could look to ants, or more accurately honey pot ants, since as the name suggests, honey pot ants could be used to upgrade the honey/nectar used on units by decreasing costs, giving the player consumables to be used during battle, or even adding some stuff to upgrade your units outside of battles.
if you wanted to you could even upgrade the honey pot ants with… something to make the ants larger, allowing for more upgrades to be accessed.
one smaller thing you could add is a sprite/animation viewer that gradually adds content as you use specific units and such.
a spare gamemode aside from a sandbox mode could be a form of endless/survival mode, making the enemy queen invulnerable and having a gradual increase in difficulty overtime but allowing your queen to consume more honey than normal (allowing for more upgrades), but increasing the cost of the honey when its used (maybe by 100/200 per use)
the final idea i got is with the queens honey and potential variant(s) to it to allow a bit more variation than adding one to the max units (and to allow more variation between fights for enemy queens).
those variants could be made by changing its hue / adding a colored gel core to the honey to be themed to certain units and giving similar buffs to how the units work (or just random buffs unrelated)
red cored/tinted honey (in reference to the stompers honey) could cause the queen to develop more around her thighs, adding a buff that increases units speed and attack speed while reducing damage
blue cored/tinted honey (in reference to the guards honey) could cause the queen to develop more of a chest, adding a buff that increases the overall attack and defense of all units but decreases speed and attack speed of units
(to be honest this isnt really much of a good idea due to potential balance issues with one potentially being more powerful than the others or the original honey becoming entirely useless compared to the variants but id honestly just want to see the queen have variations to her growth, even if its purely cosmetic)
and that’s all the spare ideas i got that either havent been said or just go off what someone else said.
sorry if this was annoying to read though, i just got a few brief flashes in the pan known as my brain and wanted to suggest them since they seemed like decent ideas at base value (or were just interesting cosmetic ideas).
Would it be okay if I combine this with the assassin idea, and draw up some concept art? Asking both Retconned and the devs.
This has probably already been covered, but being able to upgrade units multiple times would be a fun thing to see. I also support the combination of honey producing different units.
What about a bonus super powerful type? Like if the player spends a certain level of pollen and still hasn’t been able to beat the enemy Queen, there becomes an option to spawn a stronger than average kind of unit? It could work both ways! Making the game easier or harder for the side that’s struggling to gain ground?
A giant blob unit that inches forward atoms at a time and attacks incredibly slowly, but wipes out any unit directly in front of them when they do hit and takes forever to kill?
A unit viewer akin to the pvz almanac would be pretty cool to see
Honey will be normalized if we add new units, so in practice you would be able to equip different effects to different honey and the queen upgrade will be moved.
Good boss idea (the player will never have this)