Puz: Beesly's Buzzwords [by Flashbang Studios]

Game: Beesly's Buzzwords
Release: October 25, 2003
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: Flashbang Studios
System Requirements: Windows
Price: $19.95


Meet Beesly.  Beesly is a bee.  As most of us know, Bees make honey.  However Beesly is a little more advanced than most bees.  He makes the honey by creating words in the Honeycomb.  While this may not seem all that exciting, Beesly's Buzzwords is one of those games that just seems to work.  The game has a very similar feel to Dungeon Scroll, another word puzzle game.  Both games rely heavily on your ability to make words out of the letters that are given to you.  Both provide much larger rewards for creating longer words.  However, while Dungeon Scroll provides you a series of letter tiles, much like Scrabble, Beesly's Buzzwords gives you a screen full of letters. 

Playing Buzzwords is fairly simple.  You create words by clicking on each letter in order.  You click on the last letter twice to submit the word, or use the "submit" button in the bottom right-hand corner.  Each word gives you a point value.  That point value will fill a honey pot at the right of the board.  When the pot is full you move onto the next board or level.  In addition, there are bonus combs that contain extra honey.  If you are able to use a bonus comb letter in your word, you score extra points.  The game shows you how many points any word will create before you submit the word.  Difficult to use letters, such as 'J' will increase your points on any specific word.  In addition, if the word you create will fill the honey pot, the score preview of your word will blink in red.  This is especially helpful in the Classic mode of the game where creating the biggest word possible is not necessarily the smartest move that you can make.

After using a letter, it will disappear, and the honeycomb pieces above the letter will fall down, creating a different configuration than you had before.  In this way, Buzzwords requires a lot more forethought into how you use your letters. 

Often I found myself trying to get small words below so that I could get the letters above to fall down to a point where I could create the long "mega-word" that would go a long ways towards filling up my honey pot.  In fact, the strategy in playing Beesly was certainly my favorite part about it.  However, that is not the only way to play the game.  There are in fact 3 different game modes that are very similar in set-up to the game JigJag. 

The Challenge game modes gives you a honeycomb full of letters.  Your goal is to meet a points goal by spelling words with the letters given you.  Each level in the challenge mode has a set honeycomb of letters that you will have.  Certainly this isn't the way to play for everyone as you are trying to find that one solution to a puzzle. 

The Classic mode is the mode I spent most of my time playing.  In this mode you attempt to complete levels in sets of 4.  You begin with your honeycomb full of letters in the Spring.  As is normal throughout the game, as you start making honey, the letters disappear.  However in this case, you do get a few more letters.  As each season begins after spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, another row of the honeycomb with letters drops down the screen.  The goal is to get through each of the four seasons with the letters provided.  In addition, each season will give you one more bonus comb to use.  The real strategy involved in the game comes from looking forward to how you can create words to get you past the current challenge without taking so many letters that you are unable to complete the winter season and move onto the next board.

The Action game mode is the one that I tried first, and the one that I enjoyed the least, though certainly others may find it the best mode available.  In this mode, letters continually fall from the top of the screen.  If the letters get built up too high, then the game is over.  This game I found to be extremely stressful as letters kept building up higher and higher, and I was working like a mad-man to find words.  I preferred the thought out approach of the Classic and Challenge modes more.

As you complete each level, Buzzwords shows you a report card that shows how well you scored on that level.  In addition, you move up the chain in the hive, you get different ranks and job positions.  While these aren't really needed in the game, they go a long ways towards making the game experience more rewarding.  I found myself often frustrated when I got a C and gloating when I got an A. 

Graphics: 9
The graphics are very well done, the honeycomb do not look flat.  Not that flat honeycomb would be a really bad thing, but in this case, I think it helps show how much detail was spent in creating the graphics.  Each of the background images for the four seasons are well-drawn, and the pseudo-morphing of the different images as you progress from one season to the next is really cool to watch.  My only disappointment with the images is that there is some apparent compression in most all of the larger images, however I believe most people won't notice that at all.  The graphics are everything you could hope for in a Puzzle game.

Sound: 9
I hadn't played the game 5 minutes when I heard from the kitchen a voice.  It was my wife asking what I was playing because she really enjoyed the sound.  The game sounds are very mellow, and work extremely well with the game.  Each season has its own soundtrack that sounds a little like some of the tracks on "The Sims."  In addition Beesly talks occasionally while you are playing and at the end of each board.  I found his voice to be very nasally, perhaps taking away from the rest of the overall feeling of the sound, but certainly comical.

Game Play: 10
The game is easy to pick up and extremely intuitive.  Left-Clicking on letters selects them initially.  Left-Clicking will de-select letters if you click on them a second time.  Right-Clicking will de-select all letters that have been selected.  I think that anyone who plays will immediately know how they are playing the game.  Clicking the letters is easy to do.  You rarely if ever find yourself clicking on the third letter of the word only to have the game decide that you had clicked twice thus submitting the word before you completed it.  That may not seem like much, but having trouble like that would have made the game impossible to play.

Options: 8
You can turn on and off the music, change the volume and whether or not the game is windowed. (it looks better windowed so I'd suggest that)  Overall the options are scant.  The addition of an online High-Score list would have been appreciated, though it certainly isn't a necessity.  I think an option to turn off double-clicking to submit a word might be nice addition for those who have trouble not clicking like mad whenever they get near a mouse.  The save feature also seems to be a little lacking as if multiple people use the computer there is no way for each of them to save a game.

Concept: 10
This game combines two genres.  Puzzle games and honey making games.  Ok, so they really aren't genres.  However the game does present something that is very original in the way that it plays.  It is puzzle games like these that make people want to spend hours playing a puzzle game. 

Fun: 9
Much like Dungeon Scroll, this IGF finalist has made puzzle games fun.  I played on one game for about 3 hours and left only when I had to clean up after some sick children.  The great thing was the fact that I kept telling myself I was just going to go through one more level for more than an hour.  The game is certainly addictive and fun to play, and most of the modes have a high replay value.

Overall: 9
My first encounter with Beesly's Buzzwords wasn't a good one.  I installed the game and in playing ran into errors with the report cards staying on the screen even after the next level had started.  I had to do a couple of hard shut-downs of the game.  Despite my initial mis-givings, I trudged on, and somewhere along the way it went from being drudgery to being a real joy.  Beesly's Buzzwords is a game that shows everything that is right about Independent games, and Puzzle games in particular.  The game provides enough modes of play that anyone should be able to find one that they like, and most people will find one that they love.
Added: February 1st 2004
Reviewer: Russell Carroll
Score:
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