REVIEW | Living Beans

LifeisXbox’s Living Beans review | This review is a bit different because this is a game that was released back in March 2021. It’s a game a friend of mine did as his last project in college with a group, he asked me to review it for him and be completely honest about what I think of it, and that’s exactly what I intend on doing here, despite him being my friend. Don’t worry, it’s not a bad game at all. He’s the only childhood friend I still keep in touch with, and we’ve had plenty of laughs and fun together over the years, mostly with video games and tabletop games. He has worked on a fighter on MUGEN called CG Fighter and made a sequel to it, it’s a gigantic crossover fighter which is also on his itch.io profile. His latest project is an homage to platformers called 50 years of gaming and he’s also working on LaBird Games, they make mobile games.

Most Memorable Moment

The most memorable moment I had with Living Beans was when I was almost finishing it. I was building a spaceship, and a random event happened where a radioactive monster, which is a reference to a previous project of his, showed up. I couldn’t do anything about it, because all of my Beans were occupied, so my planet ended up being in a bad condition and half of my Beans were dead, I was able to finish the game even with this happening. It’s available on itch.io.

ℹ️ Reviewed on PC | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.

What we Liked!

• Charming | The graphics here are pretty simple, but I can’t deny that Living Beans as a whole has a charming presentation. These characters which are a part of the civilization you control are called Beans, and as you can see, they are adorable. The buildings and the world itself maintain their art style and are simple, but still nice to look at.

• Simple But Pleasant Soundtrack | There aren’t many songs in Living Beans, but they are pleasant to listen to, they bring the proper atmosphere the game was intended to have. The sound effects are also nicely implemented, I didn’t feel like they were out of place at any point.

• Custumizable | There is some customizability available in Living Beans, you can buy skins for your Beans, soundtracks from previous projects of the developers, structures, and some planet cosmetics, all of them can be acquired with money earned in-game by completing challenges.

• Random Events | There are a total of ten random events that may happen while you’re playing, I only experienced three of them: A storm that can set fire to trees; a Meteor falling that may or may not kill your Beans; and the already mentioned radioactive monster, which will require you to use as many Beans as possible to defeat it. These events bring something extra to the game, making it more interesting to play than if they weren’t a part of Living Beans. Only one of the ten events has a positive outcome.

• Interesting Objective | The objective in Living Beans is to try to get resources to eventually build a spaceship to get back to your home planet without destroying the planet you are currently in, it can be hard at times to keep this balance, but it’s nothing extremely difficult. It’s a good message about being careful with how much we take and give back to keep the balance in real life.

Mixed Feelings

• Menu Presentation | Living Beans is a game that is available both on PC and Android, and the menus are the same on both platforms. This is somewhat personal, but I found it a little bit weird using mobile intended menus on PC, even though they work without a problem. I feel like the menus could’ve been different in the PC version.

What we Disliked

• A Few Technical Issues | There aren’t many bugs to speak of, but it’s still worth noting that there were a few of them. I had a bug that didn’t let me click on buildings, it was easily fixed by going in and out of the options menu; there was also a bug that displayed my Beans amount as a negative number, this happens when all of your beans are doing a task and some of them die during it, after the task is done that number corrects itself.

• No Language Selection | Unfortunately, the only language Living Beans is available in is Brazilian Portuguese. Do keep that in mind if you’re interested in playing the game, but that mostly matters for the tutorials, there are some things that you won’t understand immediately simply because of this language barrier.

How long to beat the story | 1-2 hours
How long to achieve 1000G | 3-6 hours

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