REVIEW: ‘APICO’ Will Give You A Buzz (Switch)

From developer TNgineers and publisher Whitethorn Games is APICO, a bee-raising simulation game where you can raise bees, collect their honey, and turn things into a thriving business. Equipped with some tools, you step into the world and are immediately thrown into life finding bee hives, breeding their inhabitants, and turning their byproducts into all manner of other items in a non-stop cycle of days designed to keep you running around and fulfilling tasks without needing to stop to wait for days to pass, tasks to complete over long periods of time, or worrying that dereliction of your tasks will result in negative consequences for your bees or business.

APICO is absolutely filled with menus. And the game acknowledges this immediately. So to help navigate the complicated system of menus, symbols, and actions you can take, there is a long tutorial-esque system that will walk you through basically everything there is to know about the game step by step. While the text can sometimes get long to read, it’s supremely helpful in explaining the process by which you go from discovering hives to crafting new equipment and reaping their rewards. It’s not required, but each task is simple, well-explained, and comes with a small reward to incentivize you to follow the tasks as you move through each one.

I am charmed enough by the game’s aesthetics. The pixel art doesn’t lend itself to enormous amounts of personality, but the music is calm, and the little heart signs that pop up above bees as they enjoy flowers you can plant all over the world are very cute. I do find the enormity of the map overwhelming, though. The world is huge and meant to be explored, but even just within the basic area you begin in the trek from one area where my bees are to another where a shop is or where my workbenches are feels just a little plodding. Especially because once certain items were placed in the world like hives and work spaces, they can’t be moved again.

Of course, me being me, one of my favorite parts of APICO is that its meta-goal is about repopulating bee species into the world. Once you get the handle on the basic hive system of taking two bees and breeding a queen to slowly build up your bee population, apiaries will allow you to take bees of two different species and attempt to cross-breed them into entirely different species. It’s a fun little game within the game of exploring to discover different bee species in the various biomes across the game, bringing them together with the bees you already know and love, and trying to breed new species, or longer living, or higher producing bees.

Once you’ve begun breeding new species, a “rehabeelitation” system allows you to start releasing them back into the wild to restore the natural population. The whole game has a slight tilt towards environmentalism through its cheeky dialogue that makes it just that much more enjoyable for those, like me, who care about such things a great deal.

The game did get overloaded quite regularly whenever it autosaved, especially when I was rapidly planting flowers for my bees to enjoy. It would sputter and slow down for a spell before going back to normal. It doesn’t affect anything long-term, but it was aggravating whenever it happened. My other main issue while playing was just that no matter how great the tutorials were, there were still certain aspects of the menu systems and gameplay that were never clearly explained at the beginning. Certain boxes in each menu were left undescribed, and while I think I figured them all out, it was a steeper learning curve than I feel like it needed to be given just how thorough the game is about most everything else.

I also came to a point rather quickly where I simply had no idea what to do with my excess of bees. While there are structures you can build to house your little buddies indefinitely, I’m still not fully sure what to do with the hoards of them I’ve collected besides storing them there. I do enjoy the little joystick minigames you have to do every time you cut logs or scrape your bee boxes, though.

APICO is a tightly constructed and well-presented simulator about a topic loads of people are curious about but few people dive into. It’s a good way to quietly spend some time thinking about the majesty of these little animals while having a complicated enough gameplay loop to keep you invested for hours upon hours.

APICO is available now on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, and PC.