Hyve first impressions: a print & play worker placement roll & write
Do I get a special trophy for being the first to post about a game??
I went through a heavy roll & write phase last year and grabbed everything I possibly could. This happened to be crowdfunding during this part of my life so I backed it and just now got around to playing it. Due to my behavior, I burnt out a bit on roll & writes, but this reinvigorated me.
What you Need
5 markers or colored pencils, the rules and one sheet of paper. I would assume you could play this digitally on an iPad or something, but you place your dice on spaces, so I don’t know how well that work.
Gameplay
This is a worker placement game through and through. Don’t expect any combos or chaining actions. You roll up to 10 dice depending on how many bees you have alive and every action seems to have both negative and positive consequences. You are building hives (hyves), feeding your bees, losing bees, tending to larva, growing new bees, migrating and honestly a bunch more for one single page game. Coloring everything in is very satisfying, as is rolling ten dice simultaneously and figuring out what to do with them. There are multiple win and lose conditions, plus 9 difficulty levels. So far it feels very well balanced and everything functions as it should. My one complaint so far is that the health tracking is a bit clunky, both in its rules and the execution. You have an 11th dice moving up and down a tracker and I found it very easy to accidentally bump in and get confused about where it was supposed to be. Not that big of a deal, but worth pointing out. The game is strictly win/lose, so no point chasing, but for $5 and a bunch of difficulties to take on, I think the value is there.
Weight and Time
I know it’s pretty common knowledge to take BGG weight with a grain of salt, but I want to highlight it anyways. It’s currently sitting at a 2 and I’d personally put it much closer to a 3. It took a bit to get things figured out and every turn takes a good amount of thinking and planning. It’s not quite Hadrian’s Wall complexity, but close definitely much higher than cartographers, which is also close to a 2. Since it’s dice placement, it feels fair to compare it to Under Falling Skies, and I’d say it’s pretty close to that level of complexity. The game is up to 16 turns and each turn takes several minutes. Probably an hour or so overall, give or take. I think it’s a separate purchase now, but as a part of the kickstarter they stretch goaled a ton of extra modes. I think those are separate purchases and I haven’t looked into them, but there are a bunch of other game modes (turbo, kids, two player, etc). Looks like you can buy those as a separate package.
Final Thoughts
I’d definitely recommend this. My roll & write collection is at the point where something has to really win me over to earn a spot in the rotation and this one is staying for sure. I’m not sure that I’ll continue playing after I beat the highest difficulty, but there’s a lot of playing to do before I have to worry about that.
You can purchase it here: . Only posting that because it’s a brand new company and they haven’t made it super clear how to get the game without having backed it.
For roll & write taste comparison…
I love: Hadrian’s Wall, Voyages, Dinosaur Island, Fliptown, Next Station: Tokyo, Welcome To…, Welcome to the Moon.
I’ve culled: Cartographers, Three Sisters (don’t come at me, it’s sloppy and I’m hoping they fix it with the new version this year), Aquamarine, Waypoints.
Do I get a special trophy for being the first to post about a game??
I went through a heavy roll & write phase last year and grabbed everything I possibly could. This happened to be crowdfunding during this part of my life so I backed it and just now got around to playing it. Due to my behavior, I burnt out a bit on roll & writes, but this reinvigorated me.
What you Need
5 markers or colored pencils, the rules and one sheet of paper. I would assume you could play this digitally on an iPad or something, but you place your dice on spaces, so I don’t know how well that work.
Gameplay
This is a worker placement game through and through. Don’t expect any combos or chaining actions. You roll up to 10 dice depending on how many bees you have alive and every action seems to have both negative and positive consequences. You are building hives (hyves), feeding your bees, losing bees, tending to larva, growing new bees, migrating and honestly a bunch more for one single page game. Coloring everything in is very satisfying, as is rolling ten dice simultaneously and figuring out what to do with them. There are multiple win and lose conditions, plus 9 difficulty levels. So far it feels very well balanced and everything functions as it should. My one complaint so far is that the health tracking is a bit clunky, both in its rules and the execution. You have an 11th dice moving up and down a tracker and I found it very easy to accidentally bump in and get confused about where it was supposed to be. Not that big of a deal, but worth pointing out. The game is strictly win/lose, so no point chasing, but for $5 and a bunch of difficulties to take on, I think the value is there.
Weight and Time
I know it’s pretty common knowledge to take BGG weight with a grain of salt, but I want to highlight it anyways. It’s currently sitting at a 2 and I’d personally put it much closer to a 3. It took a bit to get things figured out and every turn takes a good amount of thinking and planning. It’s not quite Hadrian’s Wall complexity, but close definitely much higher than cartographers, which is also close to a 2. Since it’s dice placement, it feels fair to compare it to Under Falling Skies, and I’d say it’s pretty close to that level of complexity. The game is up to 16 turns and each turn takes several minutes. Probably an hour or so overall, give or take. I think it’s a separate purchase now, but as a part of the kickstarter they stretch goaled a ton of extra modes. I think those are separate purchases and I haven’t looked into them, but there are a bunch of other game modes (turbo, kids, two player, etc). Looks like you can buy those as a separate package.
Final Thoughts
I’d definitely recommend this. My roll & write collection is at the point where something has to really win me over to earn a spot in the rotation and this one is staying for sure. I’m not sure that I’ll continue playing after I beat the highest difficulty, but there’s a lot of playing to do before I have to worry about that.
You can purchase it here: . Only posting that because it’s a brand new company and they haven’t made it super clear how to get the game without having backed it.
For roll & write taste comparison…
I love: Hadrian’s Wall, Voyages, Dinosaur Island, Fliptown, Next Station: Tokyo, Welcome To…, Welcome to the Moon.
I’ve culled: Cartographers, Three Sisters (don’t come at me, it’s sloppy and I’m hoping they fix it with the new version this year), Aquamarine, Waypoints.