Designed by: Mike Nudd
If it sounds like one of those party games where you end up slipping a disc, worry not – Waggle Dance is a game about bees making honey – the waggle dance being the way bees communicate with each other.
The ‘board’ is actually made up of a series of cards laid out in a particular formation, representing the different tasks bees are able to carry out. Everyone begins with six dice that represent their bees, and three hexes representing their fledgling hive.
The game progresses through phases of day and night. During the day, players take turns placing their dice one by one: they can collect pollen, lay eggs, expand their hive and make honey. The number on the die defines the places it can go – there’ll always be room for all the bees, but some places may be highly contested and going first is an advantage. Once all the bees have gone to work, the night phase begins, and the workers come back home again. It’s at this point that the tasks they are carrying out get fulfilled, and it is possible a worker can come back with nothing if they’ve gone to collect pollen from a particularly popular flower.
There’s also the possibility of picking up a Queen Bee card – these give you some in-game advantages, but you don’t know what card you’ll get until you pick it up. More bees are made by combing eggs with dice placed in your hive, and honey is made by combining pollen and dice in a similar way. The goal is to be first to flip a certain amount of their hexes to ‘honey side up’, and at this point the game ends.
For a 'family' game there's a decent amount of Take That - the Queen Bee cards can occasionally mess with your plans, and the pollen-collection can get a bit tasty too.
With 2 players, fairly minimal. As the player count goes up, everyone has a little bit more to think about.
Low to moderate - once you know what you're doing, the only thing you need to do on your turn is place a die. BUT - the way the cards work means you need to make sure that when you're making eggs or honey, you've got all the bases covered. And checking out what die numbers the other players has wouldn't hurt either...
It's very easy to pick up and the dice-rolling being so central means it offers some variation. The Queen Bee cards also add randomness.
2-4
Players
8+
Years
60-90
Mins
Sam says
Honey-making sounds quite a gentle occupation, but not only do you feel the tension of the race, there's a surprising amount of what gamers call 'screwage' - you need pollen to make honey, but can be outbid at the flowers - not enough pollen: no honey: wasted workers! Some people love it and I understand why - looks lovely, very accessible rules, neat blend of luck and tactics - but for our little gang of gamers it didn't quite hit the sweet spot with adults or kids.