Honey Buzz

Honey Buzz arrives like a small, carefully tended hive: the deluxe production is striking, and the whole package feels considered. Setting it up gave me pause, though, and the explanation of hexes, money and markets makes the game sound heavier than it deserves. The rules do not prepare you for how smoothly a game actually moves, while the player aid can obscure more than it clarifies; looking at the red walls of the hives is often the quicker way to see what you ought to be doing.

Your bees work through worker placement. You take tiles, build out your hive and create honeycombs, then use that construction puzzle to produce different varieties of honey.

That honey can satisfy the queen through end-game and racing goals, fulfil orders for the woodland animals, or be sold at the market. So beneath the sweet presentation, players are racing for objectives and trying to make the best economic use of their output, without turning the evening into an accounts department.

On a Tuesday after work, Honey Buzz proves much lighter on its feet than its first teach suggests, but it is not slight: it is an honest racing economic game with a generous amount to chew on and some pleasing challenges. I would have liked a little more complexity, but that same simplicity will probably make it still more approachable for a wider audience. It is, quietly, very good at being exactly what it wants to be.