APICO
meanwhile, in an alternate universe…
the Game
APICO is a laid-back beekeeping sim game about breeding, collecting, & conserving bees!
Leave your boring city job behind to return to your family home in Port APICO and get back to your beekeeping roots.
Set in a series of lush environments, APICO uniquely combines resource gathering, biology, and beekeeping minigames, taking ideas from a mix of real-life and fantasy apiculture & floriculture.
On your journey you’ll rediscover lost species, cross-breed new bees, and help repopulate the islands.
- Live out your wildest beekeeping fantasies – sting free!
- Unique crafting & beekeeping minigames that drive gameplay progression
- Cross-breed different bees to discover over 30 new species
- Make and sell honey, Apicola, and other beekeeping products
- Repopulate lost species and release them back into the wild
- Multiple biomes to explore, each with their own unique bee species
- Uncover the forgotten secrets of the APICO islands
- Play together with friends in 4 player online co-op!
- Completed the game but buzzing for more? Try modding!
APICO is being created by the TNgineers, two brothers – Ell & Jamie, inspired by their love of casual and crafting games.
They wanted to make something relaxing, intriguing, and semi-educational (just don’t think about the magical bees). Ell builds nice things and Jamie makes sure he breaks them.
Bees are integral to our gameplay, as they are to our real-world ecosystem. We want to promote bee conservation and will be donating a portion of the money we make towards national and international bee, beekeeping, & wild bee conservation charities.
You can also find other ways to help do you part on our website @ post regular updates of our development progress on both Twitter, Discord, and Ko-Fi as well as important announcements, stupid GIFs, cute pics of bees – what more could you want?
Game Discussion
Steam User 10
First off, I just want to say that APICO is not a game for everyone. But some people will enjoy it, including me. Now the only problem I have for this game is the start. In the beginning, it WILL be overwhelming. VERY overwhelming. With all the different items, tools, machines, NPCs, bees, and books. But, if you are someone like me, who is able to figure things out and adapt to them, or even better, enjoy this learning, then APICO is a game for you. A pro to this game is that you can take everything at any pace you want to, no health bar, no thirst bar, no hunger bar, nothing. Also, I like how if you get confused about something, the answer will most likely have been explained to you already, you just need to go back and check.
Some other stuff: (spoilers)
-Kidnapping
-Butterflies, flowers, fish.
-Multiplayer
-The 4th dimension
-Learn how to read binary
Edit: I just achieved 100%! Just wanted to say that this game is amazing!
Steam User 10
APICO is a very good simulation game where you take care of the hives and bees. With some cutes pixels graphics and a chill ambiant, I recommend it!!! 💗🐝💗
Steam User 10
Ultimately I would recommend this game, but only if you really like games that make you grind, and/or if you have a strong nostalgia for the old beekeeping mod from Minecraft.
When I say grind, I don't just mean having to go out and chop trees for wood, rocks for stone, and harvest hives for honey; I mean even in the UI. Do you want to scrape a frame from a hive in order to get both honey and byproducts to sell? You will need to literally pull down a scraping button in the UI. Want to saw wood into planks? You will need to move and twist a UI element in a circle. It is like this for quite literally everything. The ultimate goal in the game, as I saw it, wasn't to collect all the different bees, butterfly species, and flowers, but to get to the automated crafting stations.
As soon as I saw how long it would take me to get there, I stopped being interested in this game. I don't mind grinding out hundreds of breeding bee pairs in order to get a new type of species to advance the game. I don't mind collecting wood, leaves, and other items to feed butterflies to get more caterpillars, or collecting a bunch of flowers and seeds to try and crossbreed them. That stuff is pretty fun, and if you focus on that, then this game can be great.
Unfortunately, there is a heavy grind to all of that to begin with, and if that was everything, I think that might be ok. But when you have to individually saw each log into a plank by clicking and dragging the UI element back and forth three times, or have to keep the honey harvesting device constantly spinning for it to work, that is where I draw the line.
I can see some people getting a lot of enjoyment out of this game; and I did enjoy it for about 20 hours or so. After that, I tried to keep going, but just couldn't do it. I would give this game a very lukewarm recommendation. I really want to like it and keep playing, but I just can't bring myself to do it. If you are going to buy this game, either try the demo and see how you feel about all the mechanics. I didn't try it unfortunately, so I don't quite know how far it goes; but you should be able to see what I am talking about in it.
If you don't want to try the demo and just get right into the game, I would highly recommend that you do not get it at full price; wait for a sale.
Steam User 6
I like that this game is much more relaxed about pushing the player to engage in mechanized/capitalist land exploitation than most cozy management sims (I assume that does not bother most people, but that design style makes it hard for me to enjoy games of this nature). When I see my hives buzzing, and flowers blooming, I feel nearly as happy as when I look out the window and see my actual chamomile and amaranth growing well. Plus it's soothing! Highly recommend.
Steam User 5
At first, I wasn't sure that I would be loving this game. I thought it was overwhelming, with way too many menus, too many things to do, my screen becoming cluttered way too easily... but, after 4 hours spent on this game, I can say that I am hooked and there are many many hours to be sunked into this cozy little game. There is exploration, building, decoration, discovering new bees, butterflies, fauna, and so much more! It scraches a little that "Stardew valley" itch I had.
Steam User 5
I quite like this 'little' game. The graphics are adorable, there are some good bee related puns. The gameloop is satisfying and there are always more things to discover!
It is a relaxing game that I have enjoyed immensely and will continue to play. I'm not much of an avid collector in games but this game has made the discoveries wonderfully interlinked. I highly liked that aspect.
For example, a bee needs a specific flower to be born. But that flower can only be spread by a specific butterfly.
There are some game bugs, I had one that locked me out of the game entirely but the developer graciously fixed my save file enabling me to keep my save file.
Give it a go, it's become my go to relation game.
Steam User 5
This was honestly the best cozy game I have come across. It has clear instructions that give good indication on what to do while still allowing full autonomy to the player to complete whatever they desire. The art was incredible and very cozy while also being very educational on learning about bees. I would 100% recommend this game to any and everyone. This brought me a lot of joy playing :)