After eight years of designing, local parent and beekeeper Yari McGauley has just launched his nature-inspired board game, Forage, The Bee Game on Kickstarter.com.
Local families may be familiar with Yari due to his work at Main Arm Primary, where he taught students about how hives work, how honey is harvested, and why bees are so vital for our natural ecosystem.
This passion for bees and for teaching is clearly instrumental in the creation of Forage, which mirrors the natural processes of bees. The gameplay is based entirely on these processes, from the interactions between bees and other flora and fauna, to the effect of aspects such as the seasons.
Bee passion
‘I love bees, and I love sharing knowledge,’ says Yari. The creation of this game has been a long process, but ‘heaps of fun.’
Yari began in 2017, feeling ‘burnt out at work and wanting to do something with [his] hands.’
He followed through on that desire wholeheartedly; every part of the game’s design is handmade, including the sculpted bees, the early paper and cloth boards and the first rough drawings.
Now, after years of hard work, a failed launch, designing and redesigning and a steady amount of playtesting, a refined final version of Forage, The Bee Game, is fully tested and ready for production.
McGauley is ‘very excited, but worried’ about having reached the final stage of this process. He explains that marketing has been difficult for him, and harbours concern that even after investing much time and money into his creation, he can’t move forward to production without sufficient funding.
Yari hopes that Forage, The Bee Game, will give families and friends an opportunity to have fun together, and ‘share the joy of beekeeping.’
Learn more at www.foragebeegame.com or on Instagram at @thebeegame.
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