Press Kit

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A dad turned his daughters’ drawings into an AR game where kids draw a creature on paper and watch it hatch in their living room.

Beebees started as paper cutouts of creatures my two daughters drew. I turned them into an AR game for iPhone and iPad, made for kids ages 6–8. Kids follow a detector around the house to find hidden Beebee eggs, then draw a new creature on paper, scan it, and watch their own drawing hatch and play in the room. There are no ads, no in-app purchases, no accounts and no data collected.

— Warren Mann, BitArts Ltd

Fact sheet

Developer: BitArts Ltd
Platform: iPhone and iPad (App Store)
Price: $3.99, one purchase. No ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases
Ages: Made for kids 6–8 (App Store Kids category)
Privacy: No accounts, no data collected, no online play
Website: beebees.fun
Press contact: warren@bitarts.us

How it plays

Hunt: walk around the house following the Beebee Detector, and tap the glowing orb hiding behind the couch or up in the air to catch the Beebee inside
Play and care: let a Beebee out to play and it fills up with hearts. Happy Beebees leave gifts to wear (wings, hats, glasses) and sometimes an egg
Draw and hatch: to hatch an egg, your child draws a new Beebee on paper and scans it. The drawing becomes a one-of-a-kind Beebee that plays in the room like the others
Party: collect five Beebees and they all appear around you at once
Trade face to face: trading only works between friends in the same room, like real trading cards. No internet, no strangers
Grown-up controls: daily time limits, breaks between sessions, and trading on or off, all behind a PIN

Story

All 25 Beebees in the game were drawn on paper by my daughters: five body types (floaters, bouncers, swoopers, crawlers and chompers) at five levels of rarity. They became paper cutouts, and the game keeps that look, so every Beebee is a flat, hand-drawn cutout that wiggles, bounces, swims and swoops around your room. Letting kids draw their own Beebees was the natural next step, because that’s how the first ones were made.