If you asked us for ideas that we thought would make an epic videogame, ‘being a bee’ wouldn’t even make the top 100. Yet here we are, watching the Bee Simulator trailer and having our minds blown. As you can guess from the title, it is literally a game about playing a honey bee, and yet somehow developer Varsav Game Studios have made it look like the most incredible game ever made.
In Bee Simulator you play as one of the stripey-stingy folk living in a hive, which hangs from a tree in a gorgeous world apparently inspired by Central Park in New York. As the game’s description on Steam goes, “you check your wings, measure the antennae degree of deviation, take orders from the Queen, and bee-gin your first independent mission. And that’s just the beginning of your adventures.” We’re frankly surprised they didn’t say ‘bee-ginning’ too.
The game is an open-world adventure that can be played in single-player, co-op and even competitive split-screen, and apparently there are “educational elements” too. Varsav are clearly proud that the game is suitable for all ages, citing the lack of violence as the reason why they consider Bee Simulator to be “a perfect choice for parents seeking a game to safely play with their children.”
Other gameplay elements include racing other bees, collecting pollen, performing “waggle dances” to help show lost bees the way home, and taking on enemies such as wasps. Your ultimate, and somewhat optimist, goal is to prevent the humans from cutting down the tree that holds your hive. Somehow we don’t think a single bee could do that… or could it?
If you’re not already excited for Bee Simulator, it’s worth noting the game’s composer: Mikołaj Stroiński, who also composed The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. So it’ll sound as epic as it looks. Awesome. The game’s out in Fall/Autumn this year for PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch. At the very least it’ll be better than Goat Simulator.
