We had a small 30 min window of free time between some appointments and while walking around I saw a small booth from Varsav studio with Bee Simulator. We previously posted the game announcement on Twitter and many of my followers were intrigued and responded with some bee puns. For example, “I get what the buzz is about”. So I was actually pretty excited that I could play it and give a quick preview from Bee Simulator.

Welcomed by a very friendly (& to be honest pretty cute) young girl named Sylwia we sat down and played the story mode and some split screen action. The premise is pretty clear, you fly around as a bee collecting pollen from flowers, racing other bees and fighting nasty wasps.

Through the eyes of a bee

Without a doubt, actually playing as the bee is pretty exciting. Playing as such a small creature in a big world, coming across bears, flying around humans picnicking or passing a friendly Schmetterling (German for butterfly) feels a little magical. The park level has some decent visuals and enough variation to keep you engaged and entertained.

When it comes to the gameplay, most of the time you try to look cool while flying from flower to flower, it reminded me about Thatgamecompany’s Flower on Playstation. It has some easy wasp fighting too, it all comes down to some timely button pressing, maybe it could be a little bit more meaty but the basic idea is pretty cool. This is also something that you can play against a friend, not really PVP but you just need to defeat the wasp earlier than your friend. The mission structure was a nice touch, communicating with the hive’s queen giving you stuff to do.

The thing that caught my attention almost immediately was the great music and decent enough sounds. Made by +/- 15 developers I am confident enough to say that Bee Simulator is a game to look forward too. Child-friendly for all ages the game is aimed for kids but adults can have some fun with it too!

Still room for improvement

Obvious while playing the racing mini-game or while finding your way through the bee hive, controls don’t yet feel smooth enough to really enjoy some fast bee flying. I’m also wondering if the game will keep you entertained for a longer play session. We played for less than half an hour and I felt like I had seen everything, they still have some time to improve it and it has potential to really stand out. Let us be honest though, you play as a freaking bee! It already stands out.