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Akácvirág ~ The Beekeeper's Loop's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Theme | #8 | 4.565 | 4.565 |
| Overall | #10 | 4.065 | 4.065 |
| Polish | #19 | 4.043 | 4.043 |
| Audio | #22 | 3.826 | 3.826 |
| Gameplay | #23 | 3.826 | 3.826 |
| Art | #24 | 4.348 | 4.348 |
| Limitation | #27 | 3.783 | 3.783 |
Ranked from 23 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Really fun and addicting, I spent a good chunk of time on this game, just running around and watering the flowers for my honey! I don't know anything about honey cultivation, so this was interesting to learn a bit more about! Overall just an incredibly good experience. Really love the art - the color palette is warm and inviting, the characters are interesting and the main characters walk cycle has so much personality!!
I'm definitely coming back to this one in my off-time!
So much cool stuff going on here, the story, the upgrades, the decision-making, what an achievement for two weeks! I can't say I understood all the mechanics but it was fun balancing the watering with the running back and forth to the beehives. The development of the queen was a really unique way of including character customisation, and you did a great job with sound effects - the little dinging noise of the flowers being watered was especially satisfying. My one visual gripe is that the idle movement of the main character when standing still feels too bouncy and exaggerated compared to everything else in the game - although I guess that matches with their stressed personality aha. Thanks for sharing your game!
Pretty great, really like how the tutorial was incorporated. Was a bit confused when the purple beehives were at peak efficiency, but other than that straight forward, and the upgrades were a neat addition just as I was worried there was only going to be one water source.
Thank you for playing our game, we tried to make the harvesting windows as obvious as we could together with the tutorial, sounds and visuals but I do agree that the purple beehives are probably the least clear. This was a big topic on how to convey the harvesting states to players.
Thank you for the feedback and for playing, hope you enjoyed!
Very nice and sweet game. The art, gameplay, story, and animations were so cute. I really liked the font chosen. It added to the vibe and made reading enjoyable. The education part was a cherry on top. This honestly could be put on Steam.
Thank you so much for the feedback and for such kind words!
Awww thank you! That means so much! <3
What a cute and cozy game! I had a lot of fun deciding what assignments to give and then playing it out. The routing decisions, while awkward early, were very fun later on!
I also appreciate the fun facts between days and the ambiance of the storm coming etc with the music. The bear and other events were fun. I also liked the character designs and story a lot!
I initially had trouble keeping up with watering the patches and grabbing the honey, I realized a few days in that it's a good strategy to water at night so you don't start with dead flowers!. I also didn't realize at first that some patches needed to be watered multiple times. I chose the barrel upgrade, which did quite help with watering, but wasn't able to afford the extra yield upgrade until very late since I had to feed the bees, ward storms, etc! I had planned to get it the next day.
I also would expect to not need to water the plots during the rain.
What other queen outcomes are there? I tried to do what I felt the "responsible" thing (as someone with 0 apiarist experience) and got "she's a bit all over the place."
Thank you so much for such detailed feedback! The rain helping out with the watering of the flowers is a great observation that, with the crunch must have slipped by us, there are 3 queen outcomes, gold winged, quiet queen, and wildflower/surprise one. They all have their own art which is posted in the Game Jam aer discord if you would like to see!
Thanks again for playing and leaving feedback!
Ouuh, nice! The controles are a bit awkward though: could've been nice to have the spacebar also detected as a an action key, when you're not used to play games with keyboards, E being near directionals, it is easy to miss-press keys and to move instead of act/to act instead of move. And when like me you try to prevent that happening by using directional keys instead of their letters counterparts, the game randomly ask you to use the mouse to continue/pass dialogues/other game phases, and you have to reposition your hands every times.. :/
Also, the game randomly skipped 3 morning of the week, making me wait all the afternoon doing nothing, and without being able to buy anything in the evening time because I didn't earn more wildflowers that day 🤔
and last reserve I have ( I promise after comes the good stuff): the lofi music seemed a bit random, and the fact there was no music at all for most sequences of the game was a bit hard for me, that have trouble focussing/reading in silence. The music of the 8th day was a really good choice though!
Now for everything I liked:
The theme was good, the bees were cute, the story was interesting, the vibe was immaculate. The gameplay wasn't "cozy" running everywhere, but it was fun! First day was a bit overwhelming, but when you take a use to it, it easy to get in the zone, to find systems, an organization! The discovering of the queen bee was a great moment, and I got what I know is my favourite one: the wild flower queen (wild flowers are my favourite flowers, and the queen portrait was just too cute)
It was a really cool mechanic to let us choose every morning how to take care of the bees and all!
Overall a great jam game, it is not perfect but there is plenty to be proud of! GG!
Thank you for such detailed feedback!
Honestly we didn't go too far into the details of the controls, WASD and E to interact is overall an industry standard that we went with, we added the arrow keys as an alternative to the WASD as well for those that find that to be more intuitive. I think a potential miss input when trying to press E would exactly either move you out of the interaction area or make it so that you aren't still able to continue doing what you were. The dialogue advancement works both with spacebar and with the mouse click, but overall it is a slight oversight not to also include "E" as someone else also mentioned this in their feedback. Nevertheless this is good feedback and I think it would probably be best if next time, or as an update of this one we can potentially include input controls that you can set for yourself which would help accommodate a larger demographic of players.
About the morning bug, I am unsure as to what you mean by randomly skipped 3 mornings as this wasn't anything that came up in any of our playtesting, but if you could maybe better describe as in what the "skipping" means (the buttons didn't show up and could only press continue, the morning phase never showed up at all and it went straight to midday etc.) and perhaps what you were doing when it happened - this would be a great help for us to find why this problem could've happened. No pressure if you don't remember or anything!
The composer we had originally on the team (the one who did what we ended up having as the main menu music) unfortunately due to unforeseen personal reasons was unable to continue and we had to find CC0 music and sound effects at a scramble towards the end of the deadline. We thought that the repetition of the same songs would be more jarring and troublesome than perhaps some music that felt a little less cohesive to the rest of the game. This also largely addresses the lack of music while reading (this is also more of a personal preference as I am unfortunately the opposite, and struggle to read the dialogue when music is playing).
I am not quite sure why the gameplay was not feeling cozy, the penalties for not reaching somewhere in time is very often minimal, and most of the mechanics are very forgiving - the game does obviously get easier the more you play it an understand which is also why we themed in a full tutorial explaining, and directing the cues for everything in the beginning. I understand overall it is quite a bit of walking, but we tried to balance that out with having dialogue, morning and evening screens which slow the pace down and offer a calmer/less involved experience to the player
I am glad you enjoyed the queen cultivation and the queen bee reveal, it was something we felt was important in the gameplay and something we wanted to add as a personality and attachment to the beehives and the story overall.
Thank you for the feedback, kind words and for playing our game, it means a lot!
Oh don't get me wrong, the fact I didn't find it cozy wasn't a bad thing, just an observation! I really did enjoyed the gameplay! Also if you wonder why it didn't feel cozy despite the minimal consequences: it's because in first playthrough consequences dont matters, we don't know the game yet, all we see are fast going bees, fast going timer, a lot of things going on everywhere and the fact we still dont know that consequences are minimals. All off that is setting the player in a certain mindset even before the game really started. As I sayed it didnt bothered me at all, but I figured my input could be of use if you were going for a slow paced type of experience.
as for the bugs, the morning didnt show up at all, it jumped from the continue to the mid day and I really couldn't know what I did for that. maybe I was clicking to fast on the continues as they appeared?
at last: it's true, E is an industry standard nowdays, but I suspect it is mostly the case in actions games, those that requires a lot of different keys to be played, with an hand on the mouse at all time for camera movements. If you need one hand for the mouse, then the most conveniant action key, is also the nearest one from the directional keys, the E.
for cozy games, we don't need as much different actions keys and we don't need a hand at all time on the mouse, that's why one hand on the space bar and the other on the directional pad is a good configuration for those type of games. I would also advise not to disperse yourself regarding on the interactions inputs (Im not talking of alternative keys here, those are always good to have), if you can put everything on the same input, for accessibility purpose, it is good to do so (by that I mean that there is no reason to pass dialogues with the mouse if everything else is made with E, adding buttons should only be to prevent the player to trigger differents actions at once)
Anyway, I hope I didnt annoyed you to much with my text wall!
Nice, bee keeping game. Only critics I have is that dialogues can't detect pressing 'E' key, and also can't see how weather impact the field like windy or rainy. Also, for the queen bee, I'm not sure how it impacted the game, but i really like how player have options to choose and interact the story.
Gameplay wise, its really fun, I enjoy the chores of watering and also gathering honeys. Though, the violet box arent that obvious, so i made some mistakes sometimes, but the mistake is part of the fun to me.
Thank you for the feedback and the screenshot, the queen bee choices affect the illustration at the end, there are 3 possible bees that you can get. We didn't get any feedback about the violet boxes being missed, so thank you for some new feedback we can get creative about having them be a bit more obvious. We actually initially had a weather overlay that had a wind/rain/storm configuration but it was causing a lot of visual bugs so we sadly had to cut it. The dialogues not detecting the "E" key, I guess we are just a part of the spacebar supremacy as I didnt even think of adding "E" to advance, so thanks for that note too!
Very polished project! The visuals and sound design are solid, and the characters have a lot of personality. The gameplay hooks you in nicely. I really enjoyed it!
Thank you for playing our game and for the kind words! Glad you enjoyed it!
My last bee game on the playlist! This game really stands out in terms of story and character building, with some cozy music to listen (╹◡╹)
Nice Stuffs
Theme is fitted very well, and my nitpickings would be on the gameplay and UI stuffs
Thank you for such detailed feedback, and also congrats on playing through all the bee games!
With the time constraints we struggle to add many more mechanics into the gameplay loop in the end, but its good feedback as we know that we were on the right track of things too add, even if we had to unfortunately prioritise other aspects in the time given.
The art style is amazing :0 The gameplay loop is really easy to understand and feels great.
Thank you for the kind words!
Lovely story, nice and intuitive mechanics, and beautiful art. Very nice to play :)
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the lovely story and beautiful art!!! Hope you were able to fully relax collecting the honey uwu
The art are you kidding! it is adorable! Very fitting for the theme, and lovely story elements. One weird bug was that game started on day 8 of spring, and the next day being day 1 of spring. Other than that, the whole game is super smooth!
Thats the time loop aspect of the game! The tutorial is technically on day 8 and the game loops because for story reasons you should reach a specific acacia amount. It should go from Day 8, to Day 1 through to Day 8 which then loops back to Day 1 until you reach a satisfactory amount of acacia. I hope this help explain it, but it is all in the dialogue and conversations too
The background sound effects were SO COMFY. I was definitely lulled into a comfy splendor. I really love how you created the characters with such individuality and personality. Well done!
10/10 for the Emma Stone reference:
Also I love this guy's vibe, he is eternally having a good time, and I'm here for it.
Hi! I'm RJ, I'm glad you like my character hahaha, I had a BLAST writing myself and Roland, especially our one on interactions and banter. I also really like Emma Stone which is why we had that reference LMAO, I put in a lot of our personal quirks because we wanted the game to feel like it's US rather than just being a game. I'm ecstatic to hear you enjoyed the sound effects, we were racking our heads against the wall trying to pick those outttt. Once again, thank you for your wonderful compliments :D
I really appreciate it!
Great game! The art is beautiful, the music and the story were also great, the game is very comfy.
The second day was bugged for me, i didnt get the screen telling me to choose the flowers and the bees didn't come out of the hives at all, nothing that i tried fixed this.
When using the furthest flowers it felt like it wasn't worth it to go all the way to water them, specially at the end of the day when you lose all the honey you didnt collect.
I had a lot of fun playing this game and would love to play it again, if it ever get an update!
Hi! Could you please describe how I could recreate the bug on day 2 to try and sort it? We've tried it multiple times and we're having a hard time recreating that. I'm really sorry you ran into a bug like that!! Apart from that- it's definitely a strategic decision to decide on which patches to use since not all of them have the same returns! Also thank you so much for your kind words! I'm super happy to hear you had fun playing the game, yours was fantastic as well :) Cheers!
Hi! Replaying the second day, I also couldn't reproduce the bug. I read another comment here from someone with the same bug, but for them it happened on the bear day. I believe that, in my first time playing, the second day's event was different, so maybe it's a problem with the event and the choice I made? I don't remember exactly which event it was, but I'm almost certain I chose to intervene in the hive!
Thank you so much for getting back to me! I'm super confused as to what's causing the bug lol because we haven't managed to recreate it even once yet, but I'll do a few more playthroughs and see if I can figure it out haha. Regardless, thank you so much :)
I like the option for upgrades, and the management of 2 different kinds of honey! The music was lovely, and collecting the honey at the right time was satisfying (I like the chime indicator sound, that's helpful). Having the beehives in the center of all the flowers could be nice to have, though I understand having the flowers placed farther as a challenge to get to in time.
Thank you so much! It's so much fun to see the different honey's for sure!!! We did want the beehives a little further to create a little challenge but not too much since it is a comfy game! <3
The hive and patch placements are intentional to add a bit of strategy to the game! Despite the game being thoroughly comfy we wanted to make sure it was challenging in some aspect, and I'm delighted to hear that you enjoyed it (along with the SFX!)
Had a lot of fun with this one, a very healthy mix of chill and frantic haha
Things I loved:
- The core loop was fun and engaging, timing runs back with how many dings I was hearing was satisfying
- The art and dialogue sections were well written and cut in very well, Roland and RJ were a great odd couple haha
- Guiding the queen was a fun meta-game sitting over each day
- Music was noice!
Things I'd loved to see:
- A bit of gameplay variation between the flower patches would be nice, distances / weather differences were nice to ponder over and I'd love more of that
- The water buckets were a great spend for the shop, I'd have loved if all the items you buy changed it in a similar way. Similarly, helping the bees recover with wildflower honey was great, a choice or 2 to make there would be cool to see
- More interaction with Emma Stone (in the game! :P)
Thank you so much for such thorough and helpful feedback. It is so nice to see the what you would like to see in the game, helps give us some good insight on which way to take it if we are going to continue working on it. RJ will be very happy to hear that there is demand for more interactions with Emma Stone in the game!
Emma Stone deserves ALL THE LOVE, I'm so happy to hear you enjoyed the game. We definitely want to add a few things here and there and I think your suggestions are on point! :P I'm thrilled to know that you enjoyed the writing and the story (especially EMMA STONE!!) I had a blast writing out interactions between me and Roland as well. Thank you once again for your kind words! It means a lot to us :)
Love that you called it Emma Stone lol. The visuals were really pretty, and the ambient track was super pleasing. It was fun watching all the bees go off and do their jobs, and the whole gathering phase was really enjoyable. The lighting was nicely done too. The SFX were especially satisfying and fit a cozy game really well. They also did a great job communicating what was going on, like how I didn't need to be staring at the honey harvest spots to know when they were full. The pitch changes while gathering were a nice touch too and kept it from feeling stale.
Emma Stone was such a fun little gem! I am so glad that you loved playing it and appreciated all the visual and music!!!! Glad it wasn't stale! (I keep replaying it because it's so cozyyyy) The coders did such an astounding job pulling this game through in two weeks!
More emma stone glaze PLEASE, she's absolutely peak isn't she
Indeed she is lol
Really cute game! I finally made it in 3rd loop because in the 2nd loop, I forgot to get honey and all my bees are stressed. Really cozy. Love the art, and music is relaxing, too.
It's okay! I kept getting distracted with watering flower mechanic! Thank you so much for the feedback! <3
Thank you so much for the comment, I am glad you enjoyed the game, sometimes I still get lost in watering the flower and walking around only to realise I need to actually get the honey too!
I like the art style and concept, it really gives this familiar feeling. But the gameplay really involves a lot of walking around - you gotta water all the flowers and then get back to gather honey and then go water flowers again. With the amount of bees it is really hard to catch up, so i think a running option would be nice.
I really like the way the controls were shown on the path tho - thats nicely designed
PS: just noticed I posted this comment on the game's page first instead of here xd
No worries, I can answer both comments!
I understand the running option, we felt that the game was cozy and forgiving enough that missing a few harvests and bees wasn't too punishing.
I am very happy that you liked the art style and concept, We also spent quite some time on getting the tutorial to be well designed and look nice!
I am so glad that you like the art style and concept! Had so much fun with the character portraits and Zumi's pixel character movements!!!
Nice art and character development, and the gameplay is very fitting for the theme. Made it to the end but I wasn't sure what was supposed to happen the day the bear appears (the whole day passed and nothing else happened). Overall, I enjoyed it.
I am so glad you enjoyed it and thank you for the kind words!
I am unsure what you mean, the day the bear appears is a normal day otherwise and you can choose to interact with the bear, or not - then go about the rest of the day harvesting honey then watering flowers. Were you expecting something more from the bear, or did you not see it? It is also a stormy day, for which you can hear the thunder sounds and see it on the weather in the morning so the bees are little less productive that day.
For me the bear came by and I interacted with it, but the bees were not going out at all so I couldn't harvest honey that day - wasn't sure if this was intended.
I am so glad you liked the art and the characters! Was a lot of fun to create them!!! The bear was just a hungy bear passing by hehe!