Genre – Educational, Mixed Reality, Puzzle
Team – Dice Kayser, Jana Lehning, Zhi Len Ng, Alexander Kappen, Dániel István
Created – BA4 Experimental Games Collaborative Project
My Part – Lead Programmer, Gameplay Programmer
In this Local Mixed Reality game, jump from the virtual to reality to learn more information on different types of bees and their habitats.
Solve puzzles in the game to earn materials to build hives for different bees. Then, find QR-Codes in real life locations to populate your world with those bees!
In Beeware, your goal is to repopulate the world with various bees and butterflies.
Your first step is to walk navigate the game world’s garden and find the various spots to solve rotation-based puzzles at. Once completed, the puzzle will form into a full image, a hint will be placed into the world, and the player is given materials to construct a hive.
Using the hint, the player was asked to go to Gut Leidenhausen, an Environmental Education Centre in Cologne Porz to find hidden QR Codes. Once scanned, the hives that were built in the game world will have new inhabitants that flutter around the environment!
Sadly, it is no longer possible to play this game in its entirety, as the QR Codes can no longer be found on location.
For my part of the project, I worked on implementing most of the actual digital gameplay elements. On top of the rotation puzzle, I created and implemented the simple wind shaders that affect almost all the plants in the game. I also actually connected the data that was read through the player’s phone to their version of the game. Though, to me, the part where I learned the most was when I created the swarming AI for the bees and butterflies, giving each one different characteristics and traits.
