Nectarmancer

by shamotte

co-authored: @liniux, @zedgame, @falubaz, @igorekkedziorek

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.57

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.69

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.78

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.24

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.71

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.46

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.96

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.50

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Heads up, version 1.1 is out! Check it out on itch.io!

The version on Ludum Dare is still on 1.0 for archival purposes!

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Made for the Ludum Dare 56 Game Jam.

- Take (partial) control of an army of bees!
- Gather nectar to grow your army!
- Watch out for pesky flies! They ruin your flowers!
- Be careful of dangerous wasps! They aim to destroy your home! DISCLAIMER: They don't have outlines due to an issue and may be difficult to spot!
- Try not to get eaten by aggressive birds!
- Strategically dash to avoid or destroy your enemies!
- Can you face the lord of the plant kingdom?

Controls:

- Mouse - command bee movement
- Mouse Click - command half your bees to dash, making them invulnerable and deal damage!

Credits:

- Programming, game design, game mechanics by Shamotte
- Sprites, game mechanics by Liniux
- Programming, game design, sprites by ZedGame
- Sprites, programming, general support by Igorekkedziorek
- Music and promo images by Falubaz
- Logo Font: Old English Text MT

Tags: #animals, #bee, #colorful, #cute, #horde, #management, #mouse only, #pixel art, #top-down

Genres: action

Tools: Godot

Comments33

Sudno8 Oct 2024, 09:02

I like this game. It was really fun to play

KirLosev8 Oct 2024, 09:03

Hello fellow jammer!

That's a clever use of the theme! I like bees and how you made the cycle of life of a bee into a game like this. Controls are great, graphics are pleasant and consistent.

Very nice entry!

The only thing I didn't really understand is why my beehive got damaged over time after a wasp got to it.. But that's a minor thing.

Good luck in the future and I hope to see you jamming again!

Patomkin8 Oct 2024, 09:05

Great idea! Too bad I couldn't really tell what's going on on the screen, since everything is so small and easily missable, but still got a huge swarm of bees to buzz around and destroy stuff. Fun!

plasticsword8 Oct 2024, 09:17

Really nice controls and art. After you get like 20 bees it becomes a clicker game and you can just spam click the bee hive and it will just collect nectar.

Sviborg8 Oct 2024, 12:33

Very addictive game! 🐝 The controls are smooth and the visual style is just gorgeous! It's a real pleasure to collect an army of bees and fight wasps and birds. 🤩 The only thing is, I wish the elements on the screen were a little bigger, so it would be easier to navigate. But when you have 20 bees, the real fun "clicker" atmosphere begins. Great job, ! 🌸🎮

An4058 Oct 2024, 12:34

So simple and cute

HangoverGames8 Oct 2024, 13:26

cool concept and mechanics, congrats on submission!

goodwincek9 Oct 2024, 00:00

BEEE BOIIIIDS!!! I'm a big fan of anything boid-related, so this concept was right up my alley. Really well done and fun to control! Not sure what killed me exactly but I had a fun time :)

ZedGame9 Oct 2024, 09:08

@goodwincek Wow, thank you for making a gameplay video! What killed you was that a wasp (which admittedly has some visibility problems) destroyed your hive.

ZedGame9 Oct 2024, 09:08

In general, our biggest issue seems to be visibility of game elements; we could work on that in the future.

Stames9 Oct 2024, 09:50

I did it.
Very cool game. I thing the wasps could have been a bit bigger, sometimes they were hard to see. But the movement of the bees and all the different enemies were so nice. Also the very big birds were cool they where a real threat.

aerloth9 Oct 2024, 21:15

very cool idea and nice execution, I enjoyed waving my wand and controlling the bees a lot, I like that the left click works both as a attack for wasps and disperse to avoid birds (birds?) these big flying guys eating my bees

i got wrecked by the birds later on, would be great to have some more mechanics to build the hive or some other structures etc! for a jam game this is super nice and shows that you can deliver a fresh idea and execute, love it

man i would love to try playing this with some kind of motion controls like a wiimote

congrats very cool submission!!!

JuanRod70710 Oct 2024, 17:02

very cool game concept, I love the simplification of strategy games. I'd love to see some more mechanics like the idea of setting up dynamic a pollen route and not having to micromanage the entire sawarm. Overall, amazing entry!

hatik10 Oct 2024, 17:06

cute little game about bees

Ecaterina10 Oct 2024, 20:07

I love how you combined two in one, making it so that players can only start the actual game after going through a mini-tutorial. I find it original and effective, especially since we faced the issue of players skipping the tutorial and then finding the game too difficult. I also want to praise the art and the music choice—they fit perfectly. I really liked the mechanics as well-very polished. When we lose the game, the wordplay is brilliant! Well done!

Cliff Coffee10 Oct 2024, 23:38

Could not start game, from main menu clicking start just makes the bee buzz sound and nothing happens. Tried here and on itch.io, thought maybe something else was going on but I kept trying and couldn't get past that.

irwatts10 Oct 2024, 23:55

Nectarmancer is an amazing name! Charming art and pleasant-to-control gameplay. I feel the difficulty got trivial once I got enough bees, but I still played to the end. The title screen start button mechanic was particularly clever, serving as a tutorial. Excellent work!

Tesseract11 Oct 2024, 00:01

@cliff-coffee That took me a while to figure out too - you need to direct the bee to the flower, then to the start button. The bees approximately follow your mouse. This is the main game mechanic, so they combined a tutorial and start screen.
It's a fun game once you get the hang of the controls, although the end game screen could be improved (a restart button, a description of why I lost, and a final score would be nice to see).

Cliff Coffee11 Oct 2024, 00:22

@tesseract thanks, that got me in. Wasn't clear to me at all.

MisaRavensoul11 Oct 2024, 23:34

using the start game screen as the tutorial was pretty slick! I think making the UI queue a little hotter, or putting some text, would have made it a bit easier to see what you should do. all in all, I felt it was really cute and the music was fun.

ZedGame11 Oct 2024, 23:40

@cliff-coffee Fair enough, we wanted to work a little more on it to make it a bit clearer, but we ran out of time. Glad you got into the game eventually!

ZedGame11 Oct 2024, 23:42

@misaravensoul Making the UI more useful is definitely something we'll be tackling for the post-jam update, thanks for the feedback!

Pimping12 Oct 2024, 08:49

I so much like pixel-art games, so for me it`s definitely 10\10

She Wrote12 Oct 2024, 19:32

A fresh and unique idea! Sometimes new ideas can be easy to cheese. I started spamming clicks, and soon the game was lagging, I had a million bees, and the enemies all gave up, lol! It’s a fun and unique game nonetheless, and I’d love to see it with a bit more polish. I also love that the game doesn’t let you play until you prove you understand what to do lol! Anyway, I had a lot of fun! Great work!

nikor13 Oct 2024, 20:46

Nice game! I wish it was longer, but i differently understand time constraints :)

rio8513 Oct 2024, 21:17

I like how you used the start screen to teach the player the mechanics. Nice concept overall!

kuggenhoffen14 Oct 2024, 16:03

Clever game! Looks and sounds great. The control and gameplay mechanic makes for quite an addicting and interesting gameplay! Great job!

Luk314 Oct 2024, 17:09

I really liked the game! Very clever mechanic, I'd love to see more of this.
My game got a bit slow after 300 bees but I managed to win!

MenacingMecha16 Oct 2024, 00:37

Neat mechanic, but found details a little confusing. Does the game end after a set amount of time? My hive kept taking damage and I wasn't sure why. Better communication of needing to deliver nectar to the start button would also be appreciated, I thought the arrow meant "click here", and was stuck for about a minute. Love the graphics and audio, though!

ZedGame16 Oct 2024, 18:12

@menacingmecha Thanks for playing! The wasp enemy type doesn't have outlines (due to the outline shader dying on us just before the deadline) and blends into the background. That's what causes damage to the hive.

LDJam user 27612123 Oct 2024, 22:33

A fun little game, but a visual clarity pass and some balance tweaking could make it really sing.

ZedGame30 Mar 2025, 14:14

Hello everyone! We just pushed out the 1.1 post-jam version, at last! You can check it out on itch.io and read our blog post about the update here.

Enjoy!

ZedGame30 Mar 2025, 14:16

@teddyreid it's been a long time lol, but you asked me on stream to ping you once the update's out; enjoy!