Developer: Varsav Game Studios
Publisher: BigBen
Platform: Xbox One [reviewed], PS4, Switch, PC
Genre: Simulation, General
Price: $39.99
The simulator genre is a weird place in 2019. There was a time where adding simulator after your title meant, well, that it was a simulation of some act. Farm Simulator is pretty straight forward and a series of games that I hate. How is there a competitive league for farming games, a genre that makes me want to rub glass across my corneas, simply blows my mind.
Then came Goat Simulator and everything changed. Hell, the idea of a simulator changed and went on to denote joke games that turned into excuses to release intentionally broken trash onto Steam and other platforms. That’s why when Bee Simulator landed on my desk I was cautiously optimistic. This could be about being a bee or about stinging people in the eyes until they explode.
Thankfully, this is more traditional game than any sort of crazy simulation. And while I wouldn’t call this a “simulation” in the traditional sense, Bee Simulator is a boatload of casual fun that managed to do what very few video games have done before: teach me about the life of a bee. When a game can stealthily teach you while playing you’ve got something pretty neat.
You should look at Bee Simulator like a traditional adventure game.
In that respect you should look at Bee Simulator like a traditional adventure game. There is a fully-developed story that tells the tale of a newly hatched bee as it grows up and serves the colony in a variety of ways. Along the way you learn about the life of a honey bee that includes mostly collecting pollen, bringing it back to the hive, and repeating that process over an over again.
Look, the life of a bee is pretty boring considering they are all drones programmed to do one thing until they die. Bee Simulator understands this and adds a lot of interesting touches to try to keep the game, well, feeling like a game and not like some timed mobile game. Bee Simulator is essentially an open-world game, even though the world of a bee is pretty small and sometimes locked off from you.
You can fly out and around your hive to collect pollen and find all manner of side-quests that help break up a bit of the monotony of being a bee. And while pollen is the main bulk of the game, Bee Simulator makes you search out different types of flowers, forcing you to explore and engage with the world and not simply fly to a single flower and return to the hive.
A lot of this seems pretty boring, and it is a times, but Bee Simulator has this strange way of drawing you in thanks to the way it tells its story. You are a bee that wants to do more for the hive other than being a simple pollen collector. Side-quests help to expand your role and once the story about the hive coming under attack from a number of outside threats takes hold, you’ll be forced into the role of scout and protector and must find a new home before the hive is destroyed.
In your little adventure you’ll fight other bees that are encroaching on your territory, wasps that are assholes, and the occasional hornet that is pretty darn scary looking to a little bee. But don’t expect combat to be like some version of Street Fighter with bees. You will instead face off in a sort of DDR-like rhythm game. A series of button inputs appear on-screen and a bar scrolls across. Your job is to hit the corresponding button at the right time to initiate and attack. You nail it you strike, you miss you get hit. This happens over a number of rounds and the first person to drain their opponents health to zero wins.
The harder the difficulty the more challenging it gets, but as someone with lots of experience in rhythm games I never lost a battle. Still, you need to look at Bee Simulator as a casual and semi-educational game and not the next Dark Souls. In fact, combat is usually reserved to side-quests along with chase missions, dance contests, and the occasional fetch quests. Buddy, being a bee is some real busy work.
You need to look at Bee Simulator as a casual and semi-educational game and not the next Dark Souls
The other quests help to break up the game but none of them are well-developed and mostly serve as a distraction from collecting pollen. Dancing events are simply Simon Says game where you match the opponents moves using the D-pad. Chase missions have you flying through rings trying to catch another bee or following some flying creature. It’s very Superman 64 and not in the good way; as if there was anything good about Superman 64.
And here is where they first and only major issue of Bee Simulator arises: the flying. Flying is simple enough using the left joystick to move and the right to control the camera. The triggers control your up and down and you get one action button to sting, something that hardly ever gets used. The problem with all this is that moving left or right is incredibly janky to the point of frustration. You’ll often jump side-to-side without warning and you’ll fail chase missions because of some of the precision that is required.
I know the old story that bee’s aren’t designed to fly and it seems Bee Simulator took that to heart in terms of controls. Maybe this is an accurate representation of how a bee move about but it’s a weird choice to make when you also have talking bees, a fully stocked library in the hive, and a nitro boost ability. It’s a shame that they flying is the worst part of the game as it’s what you do the most, but you do get accustomed to it. It never becomes second nature but you can adapt.
Bee Simulator is a strange beast indeed. It’s more game than simulation, something I actually think works in its favor. It’s not a very long game either which helps as just around the time you get tired doing everything it wraps up nicely. And if you do want to keep playing the game is open-world so you can continue to explore and collect the extras scattered around the world. I even managed to earn a diamond achievement on the Xbox One for doing something it considered pretty rare.
And there are reasons why you would want to keep playing Bee Simulator after you finish the story. Some of those side-missions are really neat, with many that I feel should have been part of the core game instead of just collecting more pollen. Helping a pair of army ants cross the lake on a little home-built raft was one such standout mission. On top of that you can earn points from pollen collecting to unlock trophies in your hives trophy room, all of which come with encyclopedia entries on what you find.
Bee Simulator is a fun and charming experience
Lastly there are are a good amount of alternate bee skins to unlock, each with some detail about where they are from. Add the ability to unlock silly hats and you have yourself a game that educates abut also doesn’t take itself all that seriously. I mean, being able to pop balloons and make kids cry brought a weird joy to my cold, cold heart. Doing it while wearing a tiny gas mask only had it all the sweeter.
Bee Simulator is a fun and charming experience that while not deep and a bit, offers a tight package and would be great for those looking for a small respite from the grim and gritty games that have inundated the market this season. It’s also the perfect game for your kids to play and learn something along the way, and even though I finished it quickly, I often feel drawn back to it simply to fly about and unwind.
Bee Simulator is more traditional game than simulation and manages to charm as much as it teaches
Final Score: 3/5
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