A Beever! was featured at the DigiPen booth at PAX Prime 2013.
A Beever! is a side-scrolling platform game about a beaver whose best friend - a bee - has been captured by evil wasps. The beaver must travel across vast grasslands and climb tall trees in order to rescue his friend, all the while using his tail to overcome obstacles by flying like a bee - thus becoming a "beever."
This game has one very interesting and prominent design choice in it: enemies cannot be permanently defeated. When the Beaver uses his roll attack - his only means of self-defense - to swat away wasps, they are thrown a short distance and then begin pursuing the player once again. Playtesting showed that the ability to defeat enemies permanently coupled with the game's tendency to kill the player frequently and send them back to a checkpoint resulted in a lot of boring and redundant platforming, especially in areas where the level is very flat, intended for combat with the wasps. By ensuring that the wasps would not disappear permanently when attacked, the player is guaranteed to have something to fight against at all times, whether it be a new set of enemies upon reaching a new area or enemies that have wandered into new positions in an area they have already passed through before they died.
This game has one very interesting and prominent design choice in it: enemies cannot be permanently defeated. When the Beaver uses his roll attack - his only means of self-defense - to swat away wasps, they are thrown a short distance and then begin pursuing the player once again. Playtesting showed that the ability to defeat enemies permanently coupled with the game's tendency to kill the player frequently and send them back to a checkpoint resulted in a lot of boring and redundant platforming, especially in areas where the level is very flat, intended for combat with the wasps. By ensuring that the wasps would not disappear permanently when attacked, the player is guaranteed to have something to fight against at all times, whether it be a new set of enemies upon reaching a new area or enemies that have wandered into new positions in an area they have already passed through before they died.