Blogtrek

Bubble Bees Revisited

Bubble Bees has become my favorite game on the Internet. It is relatively easy to play, has a few mysteries to pique you, and, most importantly, is non-violent. I have played many games and have deduced a few rules which I feel should have been stated up front;

1. Fast red bees are 50 points.
2. Catching two objects (clocks, ordinary bees, or red bees) gets you 100 points.
3. Catching an ordinary bee by itself counts 10 points, but does not count anything if caught with other objects; then you get the bonus instead.
4. Catching a clock gives you 5 more seconds.
5. You have 60 seconds to start with
6. Going past a multiple of 500 gets you 10 extra seconds.
7. Catching three objects at once gets you 500 points.
8. Catching four objects at once gets you 1000 points (not 2500 points).
9. Bubbles vary in size.

My strategy has improved over time and my high game is now 6,230 points. Here are some of my strategies:

1. Balance between snatching bees before time passes and waiting to get more than one at a time.
2. Catch single bees while you can while you wait for two bees to get close enough to get the 100-point bonus.
3. In catching the clock, you need to put the bubbler lower than usual, especially near the bottom of the screen.
4. Wait, if possible, to catch the clock until it is near some bees, so that catching it will get a bonus.
5. Wait, if possible, to catch the fast red bee until it is near some other bees, so that catching will get the 100-point bonus.
6. Bees porpoise up and down and go at different speeds. If you watch their flying pattern, you can anticipate groupings.
7. When your score has a 4 or 9 as the hundreds digit, catch whatever you can, even if it be ordinary bees, to get you over the next multiple of 500.
8. It is better, when going after two bees, to miss them both than to catch just one of them. If the latter happens, your chance of getting the 100-point bonus with them is forever gone. I call this a "chop", borrowing the term from bowling.
9. Don't snare bees immediately upon going on the screen. You miss groupings by doing that.

My high score is 6,230, which is a far cry from the six-digit amounts that are on the top 10 list. How does one get those? I counted the bees once and determined that in 10 seconds, 8 bees appear on the average. To stay in the game indefinitely, you need to get 500 points every 10 minutes, with a little help from the clocks. To get 500 points out of 8 bees, you need to snare three of them together or catch them with the clock and the fast red bee. Usually they are too far apart to catch in pairs, so I don't see how one can last a long time in the game to get those six-digit scores. I tried stretching the bubbles, but there is only so far that they will stretch. Another way in which you can get high scores is if catching huge bunches of bees gets you tremendous scores. That is whay I thought that 4 bees would get you 2,500 points, 5 gets you 12,500 points, and 6 gets you 62,500 points, each one being 5 times the previous. But when I caught 4 bees once, it yielded not 2,500 but 1,000 points. Apparently it goes up only arithmetically. So that rules that out.

So how then does one get those six-digit scores? There must be an Easter egg in the game.