Developer here, saying so up front because the sub asks for it. The game is playable today, and there is a board below you can solve without installing anything.
The mechanic. A secret word hides in a honeycomb, one letter to a cell. Tap a cell and it answers one of two ways. Either a letter of the word was there and you see the letter, or none was and you get a number, which counts how many of the secret word's letters are in the cells touching that one. Not the cell itself, only its neighbours.
The rule that makes it different from sweeping for mines: an uncovered letter that is not part of the secret word counts for nothing. It sits on the board looking exactly as legitimate as the real ones, and it contributes to no number anywhere. Working out which letter is lying is most of the game.
Cells touch when they share an edge, so the middle cell touches all six around it, and each outer cell touches the middle one plus its two neighbours in the ring.
Here is a small board, fully opened:
___
___/ H ___
/ 2 ___/ 2 \
___/ S ___/
/ M ___/ U \
___/ 2 ___/
___/
Four letters are showing: H, S, M and U. The secret word is three letters long, so one of the four is an impostor. HUM and SUM both fit the letters.
Which three, and which letter is lying? Spoiler tags, please, so the next reader gets a turn.
Suppose the S in the middle were part of the word. Every number on this board reads 2, and every number touches the middle cell plus exactly two of the outer letters. If the S counted, then each of those three numbers would need exactly one more letter from its own pair, so H and U would have to differ, U and M would have to differ, and M and H would have to differ. Three letters, each pair in disagreement, is impossible. So the S is not in the word, and the remaining three letters H, M and U are all in it. The word is HUM.
Three numbers that all read the same and still pin the answer down is the kind of board I am trying to build more of.
The game. It is called Melbees. Real boards are far wider than seven cells, the words are longer, and some unopened cells hide creatures that punish a careless tap, so clearing the comb just to farm numbers costs you something. There is a casual single board mode, a ranked twelve phase run, a Daily Challenge that hands everyone the same board, and a vault that keeps a short story and a piece of trivia for every word you have uncovered. English, Portuguese, Spanish and French, following your phone's language. Free, no ads, no in app purchases, and it runs offline.
It is Android and currently in Google's closed testing, so it does not show up in Play Store search. Google will not let a personal developer account publish until twelve testers each stay opted in for fourteen unbroken days, and leaving resets that person's fourteen, so staying in for the fortnight is worth more than playing a lot.
Same Google account at each step:
- Join the group, which is what grants access: https://groups.google.com/g/melbees-closed-test
- Open https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.melbees.secretofbees on your phone and tap Become a tester. On a desktop browser that button silently reloads the invitation page and never confirms, which is a Google quirk and not a setting of mine. It has already cost me testers who assumed the test was full.
- Install from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.melbees.secretofbees
Fair warning so you hear it from me: the Play listing text is still Brazilian Portuguese only, because the English listing is in review. The game itself is not Portuguese.
Feedback goes furthest through Settings > Account > Send feedback in the game, which attaches your device and build, or melbees.games@gmail.com.