Happy New Year! For the past two weeks I was able to visit my family in Wisconsin. As you may have noticed, it was extremely cold this December meaning there was tons of time to stay inside and do some playtesting! We were able to get through around 15 games in the 10 days I was in the midwest. Playing through both the basic game and the advanced version. As you can see in the below pictures, the game boards, and the games themselves, all turned out very differently from each other.
Being able to play through so many games with a small number of people (9, in this case) was great. It meant everyone could get more familiar with the game in a short span and work on different strategies. I was also testing out a new combat system with the game which I think is working out very well. Robbing feels much more like going in and stealing some resources now instead of an all out hive vs. hive brawl which is not what I was originally intending. We also were able to test out more of the season cards which was great, try out the new meeples, and work on the graphic design of the game. Overall the game needed some tweaking but it was all minor which is a great sign. We also settled on using the meeple with the pointier rear end with the bee in flight, so all future playtest copies will be using that piece for all of the bees. Though the game has been through dozens of playtests at this point it still needs more. Playtesting seems to never end!
If you are interested in trying the game out send us an email! We will also be at the Philadelphia Bee Symposium on February 10th, followed by Gary Con March 8-11 and then Unpub 8 on March 23-25. I hope to see several of you at these events and share the game with you!