Introduction to Killer Queen
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To start, I want to thank our community (colony) for playing this wonderful and addictive game! Whether you play with our regulars, you are a regular, you've never played before but your friend won't shut up about "that bee game", or you join in during the daylight hours instead of Ground Kontrol's crowded evenings. I just want you all to know how much I personally appreciate your presence, your play, and the fun you bring to the cabinet!
Yes, you!!
If you've never ever seen this game before, I'd recommend checking out a minute or two of the video at the bottom of this post before reading through the text to get an idea of what the game looks like first. You can jump down to that video here:
Now that that's out of the way - HOLY CRAP KILLER QUEEN YOU GUYS!!! :allthethings:
Here are the basic things you need to know in order to play this game:
This is a 10 player arcade game split into 2 teams: Blue & Gold.
Each character has 1 stick and 1 button to play with.
There are currently 3 different practiced maps to play on: Day, Night & Dusk.
There is a 4th map that is (and has been) in progress for a while. It’s the map with a purple background, and most of the community generally doesn’t like the map or play it much. We call this “meat map”.
Each team has a "queen" that plays in the center position, and the queen is the only character with a limited number of lives. She's also the only character that can always fly around the map, and has the unique ability to quickly dive straight down. The queen is the one that controls the map by changing the color of the "gates", but we'll get to that later.
In addition to the queen, each team also has 4 worker bees (they're little bumblebears, it's adorable).
Every time your character dies it spawns back in your team's hive, which is the same color as the cabinet you're playing on (Blue or Gold).
There are 5 "gates" on the map, 3 with wings and 2 with lightning bolts. The gates with wings will turn you into a "warrior", and the gates with lightning bolts gives you a speed bonus.
There are 3 ways to win: Economic, Snail, & Military.
Simple enough, right? Well, you'd be surprised how many little nuances this game has as you progress and get better at the game. But don't fret! We'll go over most of the basic ones here, so you'll be playing like a champ in no time!
The 4 workers have 3 different functions: carrying berries into the hive for an Economic victory, riding the pink snail to the goal on your side for a Snail victory, or taking a berry to a winged-gate and becoming a warrior either in pursuit of a Military victory or to prevent the other team from accomplishing their victories (defense).
The queen's role is to support her workers, control the color of the gates on the map, and above all else - DON'T DIE. Well, no more than 2 times at least. The queen has 3 lives total in each game, and she is the only character with a limited number of lives, as I mentioned before. She also has an additional direction that she can move: swiftly downwards. She can dive straight down to kill anything below her, and this gives her an edge when it comes to defeating other military presence on the map. There are a lot of different strategies for playing queen, and more develop within our scene all the time, but in general rule #1 for playing queen is to keep your lives above almost all other duties, unless the other team is about to win. If the queen dies 3 times, her entire team loses that game.
Economic Victory
Let's go over each type of victory that you can achieve now. The first is Economic. This victory is achieved when all 12 holes (beeholes, if you will) are filled with the purple berries / pollen scattered across the map (see picture above). This victory can only be achieved by the worker bees moving around the map to collect the berries and bringing them back to the hive with your team color. Worker bees will automatically pick up these berries on their back when they walk on top of a berry, and the berries are dropped in place on the map when the worker is killed. Each worker can only hold 1 berry at a time.
The worker bees need to collect the berries, bring them back to the correct hive, and jump into one of the empty holes without dying to work towards this victory. Once the berry has been carried into one of the holes, there's no way to remove or steal it from the hole. Once all 12 holes are filled, YOUR TEAM WINS!
Snail Victory
The next victory is a popular one, and why not? Riding a giant pink and red snail is always entertaining! As you can probably guess, the next victory is a Snail victory. The way you pursue this victory as a worker is to walk in front of the snail, and push your stick in the direction of the goal with your team color. The worker will automatically start riding the snail if they walk in front of it, but you can push your jump button to leap off of the snail at any time. There's no way to move the snail in the wrong direction, so if you're moving then you're doing it right!
One helpful strategy for riding the snail is going to one of the gates with lightning bolts to get speed, which will move the snail even faster towards your goal when riding. The downside of the snail is that the other team can kill you and ride it back towards their goal. Unlike the Economic victory, the Snail victory can be reversed and taken away last second. This victory is most viable when you either have dedicated and skilled military support, or you're able to ride it without anyone noticing (which can happen, though not very often). If you're able to ride the snail collaboratively with your team all the way inside your team's goal, YOUR TEAM WINS!
Military Victory
The last, and probably the most complicated victory is Military. Remember when I mentioned that the queen had a limited number of lives? Great memory! This is where that comes into play! The final victory in this game involves killing the opponent's queen 3 times. Similar to the Economic victory, once the queen has been killed there's no way to reverse it or generate more lives for her during that game.
The queen can be killed by other queens, or workers that have formed into "warriors". Do you also remember those winged gates I mentioned before? Wonderful! Those winged gates are how worker bees can form into warriors and become a military presence on the map. To form into a warrior, a worker needs to pick up a berry and take it to one of the 3 winged gates on the map - but there's a catch! The gate needs to be either white (which is neutral, and both teams can utilize), or it needs to be your team's color (Blue or Gold).
Now I'm sure you're wondering, "how do these gates change color?". Do you also also remember when I mentioned that the queen controls the map? You're such a pro, of course you do! The queen on your team is the only one that can change the color of the 5 gates on the map, 2 "speed gates" shaped like lightning bolts, and 3 "warrior gates" shaped like a set of feathery wings. The queen changes the color of these gates by flying directly in front of the gate, and both queens on the map can change this color back and forth throughout the game. Any gate not touched by a queen at all remains white, and can be used by both teams.
Now that we know how to get military presence, it's a question of how to kill the opponent's queen. The only way to kill the opponent's queen is for a military character (queen or warrior) to touch her from above while facing her. If she or any of her warriors touch you from above instead, your character dies and respawns in your team's hive. All characters on the map, including the characters running berries or snail, can be killed by military characters.
There are 3 yellow eggs in each team's hive at the beginning of the game, and you'll notice that when both queens start the game that they will then hatch out of one egg in their hive. These yellow eggs represent the number of lives the queen has left during this game, so if you don't see any eggs in your opponent's hive it means that she's on her last life, and if you kill her one more time, YOUR TEAM WINS.
Hopefully at this point you're not stuck feeling like:
So raise your hand if you went from the those mental stairs to feeling like:
Tech Tips
Now that we've gone over the different roles and victories in Killer Queen, I have a few additional tips and info that will help with your game play:
The controls for the workers in this game are just like old school Mario, so if you tap the button lightly you'll do a short jump, and if you hold the button down longer you'll jump much higher. This is especially helpful for maneuvering around the map and getting berries into the hive.
The controls for military characters (queen or warriors) requires repeatedly tapping the button in order to fly around the map and remain in the air. While you can walk with these characters, it does make it easier for the other team to predict your movement and kill when you’re walking. The faster you tap the button, the faster your character will fly up. Letting go of the button drops your character lower.
There are "screen wraps" on every map, so if there isn’t a wall in your way, you can walk through the far right side of the map and it will take you over to the far left side of the map (and vice versa). The Day and Dusk maps only have horizontal screen wraps, but the Night and Meat maps have both horizontal and vertical screen wraps. The vertical screen wraps allow workers to drop down and fall from the top of the map, and also allows queens and warriors to fly upwards to reach the bottom of the map.
Military characters can be bumped back without killing your character if they're lower than you when you make contact, or they aren't facing your character. This is especially helpful for workers attempting to get around their opponent's military presence.
Bumping other characters in general can be a very powerful tool! You can run to a gate where an opponent is trying to get speed or form as a warrior and use your body to bump them out of position.
I know this is a lot of information at once for those of you that possibly haven't played much, or ever, so I'd recommend watching one of our old tournament videos here for a few minutes while looking through this post to get a better idea of these concepts in action:
PDX Mixer Tournament
December 2015
Want to see more tournament footage? Check out our video archive.
I do hope you got something out of this post, and happy gaming bees! :D
