--- title: "From icons to pixel pictures — Savas Games" description: "How the thirty pictures in Pixel Bees become grids of little cubes that a swarm of bees can carry away, colour by colour." url: https://savasgames.com/devlog/from-icons-to-pixel-pictures last_updated: 2026-10-09 --- # From icons to pixel pictures [Devlog](https://savasgames.com/devlog), 10 October 2026, 2 min read How the thirty pictures in Pixel Bees become grids of little cubes that a swarm of bees can carry away, colour by colour. ![Pixel Bees app icon and screenshots](https://savasgames.com/games/pixel-bees/og.jpg) Pixel Bees is a puzzle about pictures made of cubes: a strawberry, a rocket, a whale, a snowman. Bees fly around the picture and carry away the cubes of their colour. For that to work, each picture has to become a grid that is easy to read, fair and fun to clear. ## Thirty simple pictures We start from thirty flat, simple illustrations with clear shapes and few colours: food, animals and everyday things. Flat art matters here. A picture with soft shading would turn into hundreds of nearly identical colours. ## Down to a grid Each picture is scaled down to a small grid, from 16 by 16 up to 28 by 28 cells. The small grids make quick early levels; the big ones become the later, harder versions of the same picture. ## Fewer colours Every colour in a picture needs its own hives and bees, so the palette has to be small. We group similar colours together until only a handful are left, then push colours that are too close apart in lightness, so you can always tell two hives apart at a glance. The white background is dropped and single stray pixels are cleaned up. ## Exactly enough bees When a level is built, the number of bees of each colour matches the number of cubes of that colour exactly. The puzzle is in the order: only the front hive of each column can fly, and bees with work left over wait in a small number of slots. A solver checks that every level can be cleared, and the levels are sorted by how often a casual player wins. ## A golden finish Clear the last cube and the picture re-forms in shining honey gold before it joins your gallery: a small reward that makes you want to clear the next one. Pixel Bees Send the swarms and clear the picture. [See the game](https://savasgames.com/games/pixel-bees) ## More from the devlog [All devlog posts](https://savasgames.com/devlog) - Devlog, 10 October 2026 **[Our journey so far](https://savasgames.com/devlog/our-journey-so-far)** From our first learning games for kids in March to eight cosy 3D puzzle games in October: how Savas Games has changed in its first seven months. - Devlog, 10 October 2026 **[How we pick ideas: reading the store charts](https://savasgames.com/devlog/picking-ideas-from-the-charts)** Each of our eight new games started from the October 2026 top charts. How we read them, what we look for, and how we find a twist of our own. - Devlog, 10 October 2026 **[Puzzles that can always be solved](https://savasgames.com/devlog/puzzles-that-can-always-be-solved)** Nothing ruins a puzzle game like a level that cannot be won. How we build levels backwards, let solvers play every one of them and grade how hard they are. --- Savas Games · a brand of Savas OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia · info@savasgames.com Web page: https://savasgames.com/devlog/from-icons-to-pixel-pictures · Index of this site for AI assistants: https://savasgames.com/llms.txt