Generation Cures - make it better

Puzzle 3: THE BEE GAME

Background Story

Seeking the source of the plague, the hero arrives at the farming village of Honigstadt. He's greeted by a resident bee, Beatrix, who tells him that the beekeeper he is searching for died of the plague shortly after returning from Windholt.

Other information from Beatrix convinces the hero that a new hive of bees imported from an exotic location brought the plague to Honigstadt, and is, in fact, the source of the disease.

Beatrix can't quite remember which of the apiary's hundreds of hives is the new one, but suggests how the hero can identify it. Since more established hives of bees have bred with their neighbors and share common traits, the hero needs to look for a hive whose bees share no traits with any of their neighbors.

Beatrix shows him a catalogue of hives in the apiary, which leads to Puzzle 3, the Beehive. In this game, players find matching sets of bees and ultimately identify the source of the plague.

Game Play

The bee catalog has five pages that show the type of bee found in each hive in the apiary. Each page displays 100 bees, arranged in a 10x10 grid.

There are three (3) possible trait variations for each attribute.

The player must examine all of the bees on a page, and group them by set. A set consists of three (3) adjacent bees - vertically, horizontally, diagonally or any combination of the three - for which each of the four (4) attributes are either all the same or all different.

To successfully complete the bee puzzle, a player must find 10 or more sets of bees on each catalogue page.

The player can then review the remaining bees on all five (5) pages to find the target bee. The target bee is the one bee that has no traits in common with any of the bees adjacent to it, and is not part of any set.

This newly imported bee type, or target bee, must be the source of the epidemic.

Scoring

Players receive points for each set they find, and lose points when the selected bees do not make a valid set. Additional points are awarded for locating the target bee (and points are deducted for incorrectly identifying the target bee).

A timer keeps track of the total time spent on the puzzle. The number of points earned for each set, and for the target bee, decreases in increments as time elapses.

When a player has successfully completed the puzzle, he or she can identify additional sets to earn more points.

Follow-up Story

Once Puzzle 3 has been completed, we learn that Honigstadt's new beehive is teeming with microbes that caused the plague. The hero collects enough samples of the microbes to do tests and work on a cure. Before moving on, the hero makes a donation to help fund the struggling infirmary in the village.

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