A new and buzzing dice game? I will Bee there! In Honey Bees, players will choose actions, roll dice, pollinate flowers, build a colony, make honey and collect bees. Will you bee the Queen Bee or will you not quite keep up?
Honey Bees is a roll-and-write by Studio Infinitus, and like their other dice game, Happy Campers, Honey Bees has a special twist. Each turn, in fact, the active player chooses one of seven action cards from the center of the table before that player is allowed to roll any dice at all.
The chosen action card determines how many dice can be rolled and which actions players can (possibly) do. Often the outcome of the roll determines exactly which action the player may apply or how good an action is. So selecting the action contains an element of luck and risk assessment. Each action card also has a by-catch, and based on that, the other players also receive a bonus/action.
The actions correspond to the ability on your score sheet. You can fill in squares on your score sheet to work on your colony by circling hexagonal squares, or fill them with honey. Building your colony, filling it with honey and pollinating the petals earns points, but players can use bonus spaces to perform additional actions elsewhere on their score sheet.
In addition to this, players can also collect bees and with these they unlock bonus dice for subsequent turns. These black dice can be used by players at any time during an action. These bonus dice, also determine when the game ends, because once a player has won two dice, each player gets three more turns.
Selecting action cards adds a surprising twist to the roll-and-write mechanism that I haven’t seen before. Another fun element are the varied king bee bonuses, one of which is used each game. The bee facts on the cards are also a nice thematic addition. Besides the twist on the mechanism, the game play is also surprising. Because the game starts counting down as soon as a player has enough bees, players have a lot of influence on game duration and it can be strategically beneficial to try to end the game earlier or later.
