Feed Your Bee is a two-player game built for an introductory programming project, exploring how movement and spatial awareness could be combined with live video input rather than a screen-only interface.
One player takes on the role of the bee and is blindfolded, moving through a physical space while a webcam tracks their position from above. The second player can see the game grid on screen and guides the bee verbally toward bonus points (honey pots), while steering them away from danger zones (frogs). Points on the grid are assigned randomly as bonus, regular (represented by flowers), or danger each time the game loads, and disappear as the bee moves close enough to "gobble" them. The game ends when the bee collects all the points, collides with a danger zone, or runs out of time, each ending shown through a different on-screen state.
Detecting the player's position in real space proved to be the central technical challenge. The team tested ArUco QR-code tracking as well as colour detection, ultimately finding that QR detection struggled with distance and perspective, while colour detection required careful calibration, as not every shade of red read reliably as "red" to the system. The team therefore celebrated the colour detection to identify the particular shade of red of the cardboard hat worn by the blindfolded player.
Working on the game surfaced several learnings. Keeping the number of bonus and danger points consistent across game loads was necessary to preserve a steady level of difficulty. The team also learned to manage complexity through functions, variables, and cleaner code structure, and to treat webcam input as a live, changing signal rather than a fixed image, since real-world lighting and distance affected detection throughout.
