APICO Review | New Casual Bee Simulation Excitement
Shaun M Jooste 
APICO review - Nintendo Switch
Welcome to our APICO review, where you show you what it's like to collect and harvest bees on the Nintendo Switch. Read more here!
Product Currency: USD
Product Price: $19.99
Product In-Stock: InStock
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APICO is a bee management simulation game published by Whitethorn Digital and released on 7 July 2022 for the Nintendo Switch. It has both solo and online modes, where you can either manage your island alone or with others. In our APICO review below, we’ll show you exactly what you can expect from this fun, entertaining game on the handheld console.
First, here is the original trailer for APICO which was made for the Nintendo Switch.
APICO review: Story elements
When APICO was announced for the Nintendo Switch, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this game. The idea of collecting and managing bees already sounded like so much fun. What’s more, you get to breed them to make new species.
There’s so much to do, let’s read more about it in this APICO review below. You can grab a copy of the game on the Nintendo store.
Continuing family tradition
You’re living in the city with your day job when Nana suddenly sends you a postcard. She and grandpa and leaving their bee-keeping business for you to take over. Telling you to take a boat to the island, you quickly head there to take over the family tradition.
There are NPCs on the island to speak to, who will give you helpful hints on what needs to be done. You can chat with any of them, and some of them will have minor tasks for you to complete. When you collect ten different types of bees, you’ll unlock the quest board.
Learning how to play the game
Near the start of the game, you’ll receive a manual for how to complete tasks and play the game. While you can carry on without reading it, I recommend that you do. There are rewards for each task that will nicely progress you forward. It saved me time so that I could see what was available for my APICO review.
Bee collection and preservation
The primary goal of APICO is to collect as many bee species as you can find. You‘ll start with Common and Uncommon types, but then it really becomes interesting. There are so many fascinating types to find, such as the ones hiding within rocks. If you see a beehive, that means you’ve located a bee home.
You’ll eventually learn which bees live where. For example, forest bees live in the forest, while others are on the water. To make sure you don’t have to walk to get to them every time, you can take the hive and bees with you to your farm. From there, you can breed and release them back into nature.
Building a home
You’ll also need to look after yourself, as I’ve learned for my APICO review. With the wood, stone, and other supplies you collect, you can build a home to live in and craft your items. Make sure you place your home with loads of land around it so you can surround the building with beehives. It will save you time when you collect resources later.
Visiting other lands
When you’re done locating all the bees on the first island, it’s time to go exploring. You can take the boat and sail to other lands, hoping to find exotic bees there. The small flying insects have various tiers, with higher tiers being of more value. Remember, you can take some of them home with you so you don’t need to keep travelling the whole time. You can also build homes on other lands.
APICO review: Gameplay elements
In this part of this APICO review, I’ll look at some of the gameplay elements. Here, you’ll see what it’s like actually playing the game, which I thoroughly enjoyed.
Exploring the map
The map only shows where you’ve explored as you reach new areas. The blackened parts open up, revealing what you’ve discovered. It’s an excellent way to know where you’ve been and where you still have to go to find bees.
Finding bees
You’ll have to keep an eye out for beehives when you explore. They contain bee species based on their location. When you click on the hive, you can see the contents. It usually contains some honey, worker bees, and the queen. You’ll want the queen so that she can make more bees and honey. However, she’ll die as soon as the worker bees are created, and then you’ll need to promote one of them to become a queen.
Making homes for your small friends
The part I had the most fun with for my APICO review was making homes for the little fellas. You have a few options. First, you can use a special tool to take the entire hive with contents. The other option is simply taking the bees and honey and building them a new hive at your farm, but I feel taking the hive with you is the better option.
The crafting table also gives you options for housing more bees at once or storing ones with specific traits for later use. You’ll also want to release some of them back into the environment so that the species isn’t rare or near extinction anymore. The more you release, the better that species will become.
Collecting flowers and cross-pollination
Your bees will want flowers. When you select a hive, small icons will tell you what flowers they love. It’s best to plant as many variants around your farm as possible, making sure they are all happy. You can also cross-pollinate flowers to see what will happen, but I’m excluding these details from my APICO review so you can discover it for yourself.
Breeding bees
At some point, you’ll need to breed bees so you can discover new species. You can see which parents the new bees came from with specific symbols in your species guide. For example, breeding a Common with an Uncommon bee might give you a CU, UU, or CC-type bee. During the later stages of the game, you can unlock unique types of bees with low rarity. You’ll have to keep trying until it happens.
Making tools
If you want to be successful in APICO, you’ll need to craft tools, tables and other items. They give you new abilities or items, which will progress you to the next stage of the game. For example, you can tap trees to obtain resin, which will give you access to new equipment and tables. They will make your life and the game easier.
Extracting resources
Speaking of resin, there are different ways to extract resources. Some queen bees naturally give them to you when they expire, while you’ll obtain others by exploring or using the Extractor. These resources also unlock new tables and recipes, which you’ll need for the advanced stages of APICO.
APICO review: visuals, sound, and effects
Here’s the final part of my APICO review. I’ll touch on the visual and sound components, while also sharing how I feel about some of the animations and effects.
Top-down graphics
I am torn about how I feel about the visuals in my APICO review. On the one hand, don’t expect any stellar graphics with realistic images. However, I think many of you knew what to expect when the trailer was released, so I don’t count this as a major issue. You’ll have cartoonish, retro images with a top-down view. I also love all the books and crafting screens.
Mellow music and buzzing bees
As you play APICO, there’s soft music playing in the background. You’ll also hear the bees buzzing when you approach hives during the day when there’s no rain. If you buy the game for PC on Steam, you can also purchase the soundtrack separately.
Tricky visual mechanics
While I don’t have too much issue with the retro graphics, the visual mechanics sometimes caused some issues. There were times when I tried to select a specific object with other items around when I couldn’t position my character correctly. It took some moving back and forward until the icon for the object appeared.
Final Verdict: APICO
APICO is a fun bee management game that will keep you busy for hours. The first time I played it for this review, I was up until 3 am, as I was just obsessed with collecting bees and breeding them on my farm. While it may seem like a basic game, there’s so much for you to do. I hope one day someone can take the same concept and create a 3D high-definition version of the game.
And that’s it for my APICO review. If you enjoyed it, you can check out my Prison Tycoon and ESO: High Isle reviews. When we moved our site over to a new domain, we lost many of the past reviews we did. We’ll make sure to put them back on or redo them over time.
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