The creator of I Commissioned Some Bees 0 did what the title says. This tiny free indie game offers 10 pieces of art commissioned by developer Follow The Fun, each hiding dozens of bees in plain sight.
The gameplay is extremely simple. If you see a black-and-yellow bug flying about, you click it and it disappears. If you spot a piece of bee-related paraphernalia, like a honey dipper, you click that, and it disappears, too. Once you've clicked all the bees and bee accessories, the level is over and you move on to the next buzzing vista.
The artwork the game invites you to explore is pretty incredible, bursting with activity and color. So far, I've hunted bumblers in a vacant mall toy store, a sprawling village filled with huge colorful monsters, a graveyard where a black cat grinned behind a tombstone, and an autumnal forest where a Chinese dragon dozed on the grass. The primary rule Follow The Fun seemed to abide by was that nothing in these pieces of art should be distressing in the least. Even in the village being invaded by monsters, the townspeople seem to be having a decent time. One guy is even attempting to catch a giant fish as it breaches out of the river nearby.
The good vibes extend to the soundtrack, too. I Commissioned Some Bees 0 is relaxing in the same way that ‘lofi hip hop radio - beats to relax/study to’ is relaxing, and the music seems to take a cue from that kind of chill, easy-to-tune-out track.
I've been thinking lately about the power of incorporating activities that have the potential to reset your mind throughout the workday. One technique I use to do that is queueing up long YouTube videos, and watching five minutes in between tasks. On the day I'm writing this, I've been watching a roundtable interview with the Director's Guild of America's 2021 nominees in tiny spurts.
I work from home which means that I spend most of my day at my desk and it's important to find ways to break up the monotony. I'll take a walk, do the dishes, switch to typing on my phone — anything to add variety and give my brain a chance to reset. I recently played through Handshakes, a bite-sized sokoban puzzler, and I found that that game's brainteasers had a similar effect. I Commissioned Some Bees 0 is useful in that way, allowing me to give the ol' gray matter a rinse before I get back to writing.
So, I'm enjoying this game a lot. But the big discovery I made while writing this piece is that I Commissioned Some Bees 0 is just the tip of the iceberg. It's the 13th (!) game in the "I Commissioned Some" series, and a 14th entry, I Commissioned Some Bunnies, is due out at the end of the month. I Commissioned Some Bees 0 is free, and serves as an introduction to the simple pleasures of finding a bunch of bees. If you like it, there are untold dozens of bees waiting to be clicked.