Honeycomb Tycoon

Honey Forest
Your Tycoon Area
You Adorable Companions
Going Up?
Rising Lava
Chess Island

Inspiration

I took inspiration from playing Roblox’s various user-created games, including tycoon games and simulators. I found it rewarding to start off with immediately buying upgrades for free and getting multipliers to further upgrade my earned rewards. Then I had the idea of putting that kind of game into Meta Horizon. The fact that it can also be played in VR, in addition to being able to play on mobile, makes it even more attractive.

What it does

Buy, Earn, Repeat

Each player is given an area that contains unlockable hives and pet bees and a big blue platform to step on to convert honey into comb. Comb is used to unlock more hives and additional pet bees; the more hives and pets the player owns, the more honey the player generates overtime, giving the player a rewarding experience. The player gets a higher tier level the more hives they buy. The game is designed so new players start off with a free hive and a pet bee they can own and can upgrade their tycoon area quickly within the first few minutes while going out to win events. Bees that fly around in bubbles also affect how much honey a player can generate overtime - the more the player collects, the bigger the outcome!

Pet Bees, Adorable Helpers

Speaking of pets, they’re fun to interact with! When a pet is purchased or collected, they’ll spawn and start to follow the player who owns it. They also significantly multiply the amount of honey the owner generates overtime, making them helpful and adorable. They also perform different actions when idle, such as flying around and interacting with other pet bees. In addition, you can grab them; they seem to like it when you give them attention and will say something cute too!

Events With Rewards

There are two events that automatically begin when the world starts:

Bee-catching: Each player has 2 minutes to collect as many bees (that are in bubbles) as possible. The bees at the bottom are worth +1 bee each when collected, but bigger bees that are higher above the ground are worth +5 bees! Players can also go through rings that have a 50/50 chance of rewarding them even more bees! The player with the most bees at the end of every 2 minutes wins all the bees that were collected by every player at the end of each round, times 2! They also win a certain amount of comb, which is scaled depending on the hive tier level of the winning player.
Rising Lava: At random times, a message will display, warning players of an upcoming lava threat that is about to take place. Players only have a short amount of time to reach a higher place before the lava starts to rise from the ground. Players can use flowers that are floating in the air to launch themselves upward. If they’re consumed by the lava when it rises, they lose and respawn at the pond. The lava will rise to a random elevation at a random speed, making the event more unpredictable; always be ready to move when you see the warning signs! Players that are still alive after the lava rise will earn a reward. The reward for each survivor increases when more players are consumed by the lava and if they have a higher hive tier level.

Safe Island

For those who want to avoid the lava or want to relax and socialize, there’s a small floating island people can jump to. It even has a Chess game they can play, great for people who want to do something else besides grinding for bees and comb.

How I built it

This was a single-man project with an idea, as well as some experience with Meta Horizon and writing scripts. I started off with simple shapes and then started placing 3D models. I wanted to give the background a simple gradient unlit color. I made it out of simple shapes with a big “opening” at the top. I then made closer experiences more detailed with models, textures and foliage.

A lot of the logic had to be made from scratch since this was my first ever tycoon game made in Meta Horizon. There had to be (including but not limited to) a player manager, 4 tycoon managers that each manage their own set of unlockable upgrades, a honey generator for each tycoon space, texts that display the number of bees collected and comb converted from honey, a custom (text) leaderboard for the bee-catching event, and a complicated script for multiple pet bee interactions and actions, as well as some logic for how to snap Chess pieces in place when playing Chess on the floating island. Needless to say, a majority of the time creating this project was spent on building logic for the whole game.

A bit of time was also put into adding finer details like VFX's and SFX's for splashes when jumping on water, for building more atmosphere in the environment, for when a player buys an upgrade using comb, and a few other interactions.

Challenges I ran into

As stated, a lot of code had to be made from scratch which made it time-consuming. The project also was complex and had to be tested with more than one player in the game (2 in this case) to confirm if any fixes needed to be made. For this, I had to use an alternative account, each on two different devices, including a mobile Android phone, which took a little while to set up for the sake of testing. Because of the large amount of code that needed to be written, it was divided into “managers” that send each other events so logic remains organized, simplified and eventually polished. Things had to be thought out and planned before creating anything, though sometimes I improvised with what I used for the world. On top of all this, I had no knowledge of things like Custom UI for mobile games, so text gizmos, 2D images placed in 3D space, and the use of billboard mode on grouped objects were used to work around that.

Accomplishments that I’m proud of

Honeycomb Tycoon was a time-consuming project that needed a lot of ideas implemented, but I successfully got them done. I managed to use my creativity and implement every main idea I wanted out of my project. The result was a rewarding and engaging experience for a 4-player session with seemingly no known issues. Hopefully in the future, the next achievement I’ll earn is when the world is filled with players who are hooked into playing the game and love the content I created.

What I learned

I learned you can combine models and effects to make visually interesting environments. While making the project, I was at first using older VFX's, but then I remembered MCHP gave access to much higher quality VFX's and they looked stunning the first time I tested them. I also learned it helps to test the game as I build and take a moment to observe my virtual surroundings. This way, I can get a feel for what I want to add or change, since atmosphere is also important for the project. It was a fun experience!

What's next for Honeycomb Tycoon

Depending on this project's interest and retention from players, I can continue working on this world to add more features like pet customization or maybe wearable accessories they can earn or buy. More events could also be added if players are enjoying the experience and want to bring up ideas. Although the game itself was meant to be shorter, compared to other tycoon games on the internet, I’m hoping this will be a fun experience that people will want to play on whatever device they’re using. With any luck, this is a game that will keep any player of any age “buzz”-y, coming back for some of that "sweet" satisfaction of "bee"-ing the best player in Honeycomb Tycoon!