APICO

Reviewing this game is simple. It's cheap, has massive depth, and you can play it very casually. But most of all: "For APICO, donations are made to bee, beekeeping, pollinator and conservation-based charities. For Snacktorio donations will be made to various hunger charities and foodbanks. For Mudborne it will be amphibian, wetlands, and environmental charities."

I attempted to start this game several times and was not in to it, but then I tried again and accepted a sort of.. slower pace for it. Trying to understand and do things all at once all at the same time is immediatley overwhelming and sort of impossible. Instead of trying to breed 4 special bees and cross 7 flowers and find 2 butterflys all at once, and stress about honey being ready to process.. I just log in for a bit and focus on one thing at a time. This approach has made the game much more enjoyable and you can be a bit relaxed, and trust the game in saying there is no rush. I like being able to pick one small goal, like breeding a new type of flower, and not trying to juggle many things at once. There are tons of other things I feel like I need to do, restoring ecosystems and finding species, but I let myself let go and take it easy. I appreciate how this game has helped me slow down.

EDIT: I checked some other reviews and first things first: i am not one of those weirdos complaining cause the game has pronouns. I use they/he, as a matter of fact. And tbh this game is quite bland on the inclusion, wish they were more over the top about it, y'know like, tons of pride flags to add to my porch from the get go and stuff like this, but thats not the reason for my negative review. Lets get to it: There is a huge core problem with it that is: the UI. You know that saying "don't reinvent the wheel"? They tryed (and failed) to reinvent the wheel with that UI. Whatever the intention was with those menus, didn't work. Beekepping? Love it. Breeding species of bees and flowers and collecting everything there is? Love it. Doing everything step-by-step in their own worktables? Amazing! I love to go by each step of gathering bee-products and breeding bees and crafting more products! I love how realistic the mechanics of beeking are! I love how they mashed the realistic mechanics with an extremely simple pixelated artstyle! Even the music and everything is so cozy. But. That UI. I think it's easily the worst UI i've ever seen, and that is considering the UI *after* adjusting it in the acessibility settings - most of which are very limited and don't really do much. The adjustiments barely do anything to help with the mess of the thousands of menus all over the place. The option to pin the menus doesnt help either, cause there is not enough space on the screen to place each in a good spot, and they overlap anyway, and each menu has its own shape and size that makes it impossible to organize them in a good manner (and no way to resize them as far as im aware). Honestly, i think i spent more time battling against the multiple menus than actually playing and exploring. I even insisted and played more to see if i got used to it, but the more i played, the more and more frustrated i got, until i just gave up and closed the game. Unfortunatly, the issues of UI were enough to ruin all the good aspects of this game. I can see there is a ton of content to it and a huge map to explore and so many mechanics to discover, but i just couldn't get to them without feeling frustrated with the menus.

Pronouns

APICO gets a review now. Bee game. Best enjoyed on my widescreen monitor so I can have sooo many machine tabs open at once. Very glad there's automation late into the game, and the overall gentle "hey, with cogs, now your machine keeps spinning once cranked" is Very helpful as well as the first time I've seen a small boost to production in early-game go so well. Go bees. Very glad I can buy Monthense's theme music. I group this game with Minecraft, Terraria, and Stardew valley in my head for it's ability to let me live in a virtual location for a Really long time, slowly building and improving it around me. VERY GLAD THERE'S MULTIPLAYER

It's fun for the first ten hours. After that, the novelty wears off, and you are left with rolling traits and doing routine tasks. If you like gacha, then you may like the process.

I feel like it does what it set out to do - it's a cozy, low stakes fidget game where you get to build up your bee farms. I enjoy having it on and clicking around while talking to my friends, and knowing there's nothing I can really do to mess anything up. I think in the world of "cozy farm sims", it does a decent job, but has a lot of the common pitfalls. Mostly in terms of progression "narrative depth". Pros - cozy - simple - bees are cool - if ur a millennial, hella millennial puns - controls generally work well and you can progress without trying too hard. Cons ~~ - inventory sometimes bugs. you have to open and re-close it for it to work again. This usually doesn't matter, but I lost a $400 item from a sale because of it right before Steam prompted me for this review and I *really* considered giving it a thumbs down for that alone ~~ Editing this one: I found the item I thought I lost a small ways across the map hanging out in the forest, hidden under trees. The inventory bug does seem to be the most prevalent, but opening and closing your extended inventory (E key) seems to reset it in most scenarios. - in the beginning of the game, you unlock and progress *so fast*, its constant achievements and goals. And then it slows to a crawl, and it's not exactly clear how much time you should expect anything else forever more to take. In other games like Stardew, it was very evident if a thing you were working on was going to feel grindy or not. In this game it's much less so. - you can open a lot of menus for items, which is a pro and a con. I sometimes feel like I'm just playing a menu switcher game instead of crafting. I'm enjoying my time. I'm glad I bought it on Humble Bundle. It fits its niche and is generally pretty good.

For the price i can't recommend the game its too shallow and underbaked maybe for a third of the price it would be but the game just does not have the content that come with this price tag sad as i do think the potential was there

візуально дуже гарно, але тааааааааааааааак нудно

The game has a very cozy feel to it, and the gameplay consists of a slow-paced grind. Something the game does really well is having multiple gameplay systems of breeding bees, collecting butterflies, and catching fish, which don’t have overlapping mechanics (bees and butterflies are slightly related due to flowers, but can be treated as entirely separate). This means if you get bored of trying for a bee, you can go catch fish for a while or run around looking for butterflies, and there is no pressure to do things in a certain order or rush for any specific goals. The list of cons is pretty short here: the UI takes some getting used to and breeding all the different types of bees sometimes requires annoyingly specific conditions. There is a chance you might enjoy some activities more than others, as bee breeding is the most involved, while catching fish is (probably) the least interesting of the three, but take things slow and eventually you’ll clean up every goal in the books! Overall, a strong 7/10, or maybe even an 8/10. A very chill game that’s good when you want to relax or play something slower. Maybe not something you’d play day in day out all week, but certainly good for a rainy afternoon or two. Note: Some proceeds of buying this game go to various beekeeping and bee conservation charities. In fact, the developers’ other games all go towards similar causes related to their topics. Neat.