To bee, or not to bee?
Beefense is a 2018 Real-Time Strategy / Tower Defense game hybrid by Byte Rocker Games.
Queen Nectarina, the queen of the honeybee swarm, is under siege by the legions of Queen Hornetta, who plot to steal her honey and take over her land. With the help of the Professor, and a brave soldier bee named Rambee, she and her swarm fight against Hornetta's forces, of hornets, fleas, moths and zombie bees, called Zombees.
This work contains the following tropes:
- Ant War: A war between honeybees and hornets drives the plot.
- Airborne Mook: The Wax Moths, which can be troublesome as they can fly off the track and home in to your hive.
- Artistic License – Biology: The fleas are portrayed as honey thieves. Fleas feed exclusively on the blood of mammals and birds.
- Big Bad: Queen Hornetta.
- Big Good: Queen Nectarina.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The "Glowworms" have wings and look more like moths/fireflies.
- Decapitated Army: Averted with the Hornets even after Queen Hornetta's death: the Hornet General insists they fight to avenge her, while the other hornets are questioning why they're still fighting for a dead queen anyway.
- Dragon Ascendant: The Hornet General after Queen Hornetta dies.
- Energy Economy: The currency of the game is Pollen, which is gathered from flowers to build towers and hatch new bees, Nectar, which keeps the bees fighting, and Honeydew, which is dropped by enemies and used in research points.
- Fartillery: Some towers employ farting stink beetles as area-of-effect weapons.
- Fragile Speedster: The Honeypot Thieves, which steal more honey if they get to your hive.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Queen Hornetta, the tyrannical queen of the hornets who is willing to wipe out the bees to steal their honey: which she only wants to use to wax her legs with while the bees starve.
- Go-Karting with Bowser: After Hornetta and the Hornet General are killed, the rest of the hornet swarm have no further quarrel with the bees and join them in celebrating their new kingdom.
- Gratuitous Ninja: The Black Ninja Wasp, who acts as a bonus weapon who can be summoned to take out multiple foes.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Narrowly averted, Rambee is fully prepared to fight and die for his swarm, but the timely arrival of Black Ninja Wasp saves him.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Not actually fought as enemies, but their polluting factories, called "Dirtasauruses" by the Professor, pollute landacapes and kill the flowers the bees rely on.
- Insect Queen: Nectarina the queen bee and Hornetta the queen hornet.
- Kick the Dog: Hornetta is stealing the bees' honey, thus condemning them to starvation, just to use the honey for waxing her legs.
- Killed Off for Real: Hornetta and the Hornet General.
- Last Stand: The level "Black Moth Down", where an overwhelming force of Airborne Mooks has swarmed the area and the only hope to win is to block off the exits to the valley, lure them inside, then cut off their escape routes.
- Light Is Good: The Glowworms light up the battlefield in the dark forest levels, and only enemies within their light radius can be targeted by towers.
- Mighty Glacier: The slow-moving but very high-health Rhino Beetle enemy.
- Nitro Boost: Aside from nectar and pollen, water is another resource the bees can collect. When the water meter is full, towers can fire faster.
- Pun: Tons of it. The professor's Beesearchers, the commando leader Rambee, and so on.
- Raising the Steaks: Zombie bees, called Zombees, are among the enemies, which were once normal bees but infected by mites.
- Real-Time Strategy: Part of the game's mechanic is giving the bees several different tasks, such as gathering pollen, collecting nectar, and manning the towers to fire at enemies.
- Save the Villain: The Professor tries to cure Queen Hornetta of her madness with an antidote, and even Queen Nectarina sees her as merely a victim of her own violence. The antidote doesn't work as planned, however, and Hornetta dies anyway.
- Scary Scorpions: Averted with the Book Scorpion, a friendly and helpful doctor who helps cure the hive of mite infestations during Zombee outbreaks.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After Nectarina reveals to the hornets that Hornetta's death was an accident, the rest of the swarm bails out and leaves the stubborn Hornet General to his fate.
- Shout-Out:
- One level is called Black Moth Down.
- The level where you destroy the Zombee hives is called Zombeeland.
- And of course, the commando bee, Rambee.
- The Plague: The mites infecting the Zombees. If they reach your hive then they will be infected as well, needing the Book Scorpion to clear out the outbreak right away.
- The Professor: With a team of Beesearchers, no less!
- Tower Defense: A variant: the towers don't fire automatically and must have a bee occupying them to function.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The level with Rambee has you with only one bee and no ability to make new towers, instead having to make do with the already pre-existing towers to fight off Hornetta's forces.
- Unpleasant Animal Counterpart: The heroes are honeybees, the villains are hornets.
- Upsetting the Balance: Hornetta has disrulted the laws of nature, forcing the Black Ninja Wasp to intervene.
- Virtuous Bees: The main protagonists are a friendly bee swarm.
- You Require More Vespene Gas: Nectar is a valuable resource that bees need to work: hungry bees can't operate weapons or work efficiently.
- You Shall Not Pass!: Rambee attempts this (and even directly quotes it), taking on an entire swarm of Hornetta's forces on his own.
- Zerg Rush: The fleas, which attack in massive swarms but are weak individually.
