For some developers, the limited graphics of an early game system are a restriction that they push against, trying to get the best visuals out of a console despite the poor output. However, sometimes we get a game creator who instead tries to think creatively within the boundaries of the graphics, and Killer Bees! manages to make one of the Odyssey²’s most enjoyable and conceptually interesting titles by working within the boundaries of what they had.

Killer Bees! is a game all about playing as a cloud of bees, the player moving the small swarm of cleverly contextualized white pixels around the screen to sting baddies. Funnily enough though, the killer bees mentioned in the game’s title aren’t just your own little swarm. An alien menace known as the Beebots have landed on Earth, and while in most stories this is where humans would step in with their military might, in this game it’s on a small cloud of insects to push back these invaders. The Beebots don’t really have any way to fight back though, running around the screen to try and avoid your deadly stings, but they do have some colored bees that will swoop in and try to damage the player. Up to three clouds of the alien bees can appear on screen, and if you make contact with them you’ll quickly lose bees from your own swarm, dying once your cloud has been completely depleted. You aren’t completely defenseless against the rival bugs though, as every time a Beebot dies it will recharge the RoSHa Ray, a long horizontal beam you can activate to disintegrate enemy bees caught in the blast. They will return eventually, but the system of charging the ray up and blasting the other bees is important, as if the alien bees are on the field too long, they’ll shift into blue bees that will try to better defend the Beebots and later become red bugs that will specifically fly towards you for the kill.

Already Killer Bees! has quite a few ingredients to make the regular play fun. As the swarm, your goal is to hunt down and hover around the Beebots until they die. Sometimes they’ll run right into you, but most of the time they’ll zoom around the play area and be pretty hard to pin down. Successful stings will slow the Beebots down, making the task easier over time, but they can regain speed if you aren’t able to keep up the pressure. Intercepting their paths is how you deal damage and they do settle into a pattern, a pattern you can influence based on where you kill the other Beebots. Beebots will redirect when they hit a wall, each other, or the gravestones of a previously killed Beebot, meaning the range of movement for your enemies thins as you take them out. This does, however, mean that the alien bees have a better chance of protecting them as they can hover around those paths and make approaching the Beebots a dangerous prospect. Careful maneuvering and smart use of the RoSHa Ray will allow you to keep going longer, and Killer Bees! has a feature that makes continued play a bit more interesting than other Odyssey² titles: levels!

Once you kill all the Beebots in a stage, the game will reset the play field and throw you into a new level where things are made a little harder. This means that Killer Bees! is not your typical retro looping game and there’s a constant goal to work towards, but the game does not make that easy. As enemy swarms become more aggressive and the Beebots grow faster, you’re going to have to spend more time in a stage, raising the risk of being wiped out. Your small bee cloud can take hits without dying, but once its run out of bees, that puts an end on your current run, meaning you’ll have to start over from level 1. Having fewer bees also makes your stings less effective, making it harder to take down the aliens after you’ve lost too many. Thankfully, at the start of each stage you are given a full cloud so you can take the occasional risk and only be punished by having your points lower when you finish a level.

Poor play can make any level lethal, but at about the halfway point Killer Bees! stops pulling its punches. Since a death can always lead to a full reset, it makes it particularly tense when you’ve started pressing up against your personal best, and the levels are usually short enough that you can blast through the early ones to work your way up through them. Killer Bees! gives the player just enough power with the RoSHa Ray to ensure they’re not helpless in the later stages but still encourages caution as the bee cloud can be wiped out fairly quickly. Simple strategizing and fast reflexes are a must to push deeper into Killer Bees!, but the game also has a high score to set so that you can make even a losing run feel successful. A person aiming to hit the last level is likely to lose interest though due to how the difficulty scales, and with no way to continue after death it’s unlikely most people will even get close to reaching that 26th level. While most Odyssey² games come with multiple modes of play, Killer Bees! only has the one, and while that does ensure that main mode is a strong experience, it feels like it could have added something like being able to continue from a certain stage or letting you continue after a death to alleviate the difficulty issues.

THE VERDICT: Killer Bees! already stands out from other Odyssey² titles for its unique concept, but it also manages to make an experience that doesn’t run thin after a few minutes with it. While the gameplay remains consistent throughout, the increasing difficulty and advancement through levels allows it to avoid feeling overly repetitive. Score isn’t the only motivator as moving through levels that push you harder and harder encourages the player to develop their skill and think intelligently about their actions, even if the game speed and difficulty do get a bit too high if you near the end. It is still a fairly simple game despite all that, but it has just enough going on in it that the gameplay won’t grow old too fast.

And so, I give Killers Bees! for the Magnavox Odyssey²…

A GOOD rating. One of the better titles for the Odyssey² and a step up from what most people can expect from early console video games, Killer Bees! benefits quite a bit from pushing into later gaming mainstays like multiple levels and difficulty increasing during one play session. It’s not totally graceful in doing so, the single life feels quite punishing and things can get out of hand as the game gets harder and harder. However, the challenge doesn’t disappear once the player understands the mechanics, with just enough variables to keep track of that you can never get complacent.

If you choose to revisit the Odyssey², Killer Bees! should be at the top of your list of games to play. A fairly unique premise with good progression and gameplay shows that it wasn’t the system that made many early games so simple and bland. Creativity and working within its limitations helped Killer Bees! provide an enjoyable little experience.