Bee Island

Review

To bee or not to bee, that is the question.  If you had the opportunity to become the next Queen Bee of your bee hive, how would you bee handling it? It’s not as straightforward as you might think. The opportunity would arise at the passing of the last Queen Bee. The hive would put on a massive feast of Royal nectar, and all the bees would eat as much as possible to fatten themselves up as fast as possible.  Fights would erupt all around the table, with bees growing like Sumos and fighting each other to the death for the title. If you are successful, then your life would pretty much consist of sitting in your hive and giving birth to other bees that would cherish you and do anything to protect you. So here you are, Queen bee on your own Bee Island, and you must push back waves of flying hornets and other nasty flying things in order to survive. God save the Queen Bee.

Bee Island is a tower defence game developed and self-published by Lemma Arts on the 26^th of August, 2023, on the Steam platform.

In this current version, the game consists of a story mode only, but a challenge mode has been announced and will be available soon. You start the game with a small land of hexagon tiles (honeycombs) surrounded by water, and your Queen sits in the centre. You also have several working bees and a few piles of stored nectar, pollen and honey. Your first task is to increase the number of working bees, building bees and fighting bees. You need pollen and nectar, which your working bees will automatically find and gather from nearby islands. You also need a honey industry and a kindergarten to create new bees (working, builders and fighting bees). The more bees you have, the more resources you’ll gather. You’ll also have a countdown to show you when the next wave of enemies will attack your colony; you’ll have to ensure that you have enough towers and fighter bees to defeat each assault. Sure, the first few attacks will be small and easy to repel, but as you progress through the story, new enemy units and more units per wave will be introduced.    

Building a research centre as soon as possible is important so you can upgrade your buildings and bees. Each new technological upgrade will need specific resources and time to acquire them. It is also important to know that you are restricted as to how many bees you can have, and how many honeycombs (tiles) in your colony. On my first try, I started to put honeycomb everywhere without thinking too much about the waves, as the first couple of waves came from one direction at a time. I quickly learned that you must structure your hive’s defences on all sides and have enough fighting bees ready to save the day. So, yes, the building aspect of your hive involves a little bit of strategy and plenty of bees.

At first, your towers and bees will be equipped with medieval warfare. There are towers like a ballista as well as one which launches a wall of arrows onto incoming enemies, and your bees will have a spear. As you go through each era (three in total) with your research, your towers and units will transition from Medieval to World War II to Modern Warfare, which is fun. I particularly like that you can jump into towers and start shooting at incoming waves of hornets, dragonflies, moths and ladybugs. However, it feels that the accuracy is a bit off every now and then. And you can’t jump into the missile battery towers at this stage.  

It is a fun little game with good graphics, and the soundtrack is ok. The game has also been translated into over 20 different languages, making it accessible to almost everyone. I haven’t experienced too many bugs apart from the one who wants to kill my Queen. But I question the replayability aspect of the game. After changing the layout of your hive after a few games, there is not much else to do. The challenge mode will be a good addition when it is released.

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com

Bee Island Steam Store Page