Comb Breaker

Capped comb means the honey is finished, and finished honey has to be uncapped before it comes out. You have a hive tool at the bottom of the frame and one pollen pellet to do it with. Keep the pellet off the floor, keep the rally going inside the comb, and see how deep into the harvest you get — an open frame with nobody standing over it is exactly what draws wasps, and from the second comb on they come down for it.

How it goes#

• Slide the tool with `A` `D` or the arrow keys, or just move the mouse — the tool follows it. On a phone, hold anywhere on the arena and drag; the tool tracks your thumb.
• Serve with `Space` or a click. Leave it alone for three seconds and it serves itself. Once the pellet is away, the same button fires a stinger if you have one banked; on a phone, tap with a second finger while your thumb keeps steering.
• Where the pellet lands on the tool is where it goes. Catch it dead centre and it goes straight up; catch it off the end and it leaves at an angle. That is the entire aim of the game — there is nothing else to steer with.
• The combo is the score. Every cell you open in one flight raises the multiplier, up to five times, and touching the tool resets it to one. A long rally trapped up inside the comb is worth several times the same cells picked off one at a time.
• Cells take one, two or three passes. Pale wax opens at the first touch, gold caps take two, and propolis-sealed cells take three. Grey resin never opens at all — it is only ever in the way, and it does not have to be cleared to finish a level.
• Wasps come down the frame from level two. They weave, they lean toward wherever the tool is, and one that reaches it stings: the tool is pinned where it stands for a second and a half and the combo goes back to one. Nothing takes a pellet off you directly — but a tool that cannot move while the pellet is coming down usually costs one anyway. Slide out from under them, or catch one with the pellet and swat it for points at the combo you are on. They come quicker every level, and quicker again the longer you stay on the same comb — a level you settle into gets steadily busier, so there is no comb worth living on.
• Drops fall from opened cells: multi-ball, which turns every pellet in play into three, plus a spare pellet, a wide tool, and slow pollen for twelve and nine seconds. Multi-ball is the most common of them and the one worth breaking a rally to go and get. The key under the arena says which colour is which.
• Every comb owes you a multi-ball. They fall on a roll like everything else, but the comb counts how long it has been since the last one — and once it has gone long enough, the next cell to open has one in it whatever the roll says. No comb goes by without offering at least one. Catching it is still on you, though a drop that gets past the tool brings the next offer around much sooner.
• A multi-ball survives the comb it was won on. Clear the frame with a swarm still up and up to three of them come back out on the next serve, fanned off the tool together — so finishing a comb well is not the thing that takes your multi-ball away. Only losing a pellet puts you back to one.
• Stingers are the drop that keeps. Catching one banks a charge — it never runs out, and catching more stacks them up to six. `Space` or `W` fires one straight up out of the tool, and it takes a pass off every cell in that column on the way, swatting any wasp in its path. Resin stops it dead, and it opens cells at the multiplier you are already on without raising it. It is the only shot in the game you aim by standing somewhere, so it is what the corner cell and the third pass on propolis are for.
• You get three pellets. Losing one off the bottom costs a spare; losing the last one ends the run. Clearing a comb pays a bonus that grows with the level, and the next comb is deeper than the last.
• Sound is on. `M` or the speaker in the corner of the status bar turns it off, and the cabinet remembers which you chose. Multi-ball brings a tune up with it, and it plays on across a cleared comb — it stops when you are back to one pellet, and nothing else stops it.

Posting a run#

Sign in with Discord and the run posts itself when the last pellet goes; play as a guest and it is kept as a personal best on this device instead. Either way the game is the same game — the board is the only thing sign-in changes. The arcade page has the longer version of how that works, and the other cabinets.