Simulation fans will soon be able to raise bees in the indie, beekeeping simulation game APICO, offering a new way to learn about conservation. APICO, developed by TNgineers and published by Whitethorn Games, offers graphics similar to Stardew Valley or Littlewood, while including complex crafting systems seen in Minecraft. Players will build crafting tables, apiaries, and many other tools to both raise healthy bees and profit from the products produced while learning about the importance of a bee's place in the ecosystem.

APICO is a particularly unique title in the simulation genre for its combination of educational content and engaging gameplay. Players of any age will be able to learn about beekeeping, conservation, and biology while getting to enjoy a relaxing simulation game. Additionally, the complex crafting system and resource management aspects of the game give players a hands-on understanding of the work that goes into beekeeping, and why the efforts to protect bees are so important. Additionally, TNgineers has confirmed it will be donating APICO profits to bee conservation, allowing players to make a difference in the real world while supporting the game.

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While APICO will be released for PC on May 20, 2022, (World Bee Day), the game will also be available on consoles early in the summer, giving fans of PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch the chance to play on preferred platforms. Additionally, more content is planned post-release for APICO according to TNgineer's Ko-fi blog, which has outlined plans to introduce butterflies and content for the ocean biome. With so many exciting ways to keep bees, many simulation fans will likely enjoy diving into APICO. To talk about the inspiration behind APICO, Co-found of TNGineers Ell sat down with Screen Rant, giving a glimpse into the buzzing world of digital beekeeping and conservation.

Apico Bee Farming Is Minecraft Forestry Mod But Better

Creating games that help educate people about important ecosystem supporters like bees is a big challenge When getting started on APICO, were there any games you drew inspiration from? How did that affect development?

Ell: APICO was originally inspired by an old Minecraft mod called Forestry! Initially, the idea was just to take the concept and make a full game around the idea, but then it expanded into a much bigger game.

As I worked on the game, I mainly took inspiration from games like Minecraft and Terraria — specifically around the way menus or crafting were handled, but there were also just a lot of “new” things that we didn’t have anything to base it on so we just had to come up with our own way of doing things.

I’ve been told there’s some aspect that reminds people of Stardew Valley and Littlewood, but I’m ashamed to say I’ve never actually played either!

APICO has gone through many changes and updates during its development. What was the biggest change you made from the start of the game until its release?

Ell: Probably the biggest change was changing the engine!

Originally I made the game in just HTML+JavaScript, but when we started talking to our publisher, Whitethorn Games, I agreed I’d move the game over to GameMaker. It was an engine I vaguely knew about from when I was younger, and they had done console ports with that engine before.

It probably took me about three months just to re-write everything in GML (the language GameMaker uses) and get the game back to where it was before then finishing it off.

Not as big, but still pretty meaty, was adding in multiplayer after the fact. With APICO, this was a bit more forgiving than most games, though, as for the most part, we already had a lot of helper methods for most actions (clicking a slot, hitting a tree, etc.), so it didn’t end up being too bad to use this as a basis for a sync event to keep the games in step.

One last honorable mention is back in the HTML version of the game — there were actually roof tiles! We don’t talk about them anymore…

APICO Beekeeping Farm Example

APICO has so many adorable bee species. How did you decide on names for each one and are they all based on real bee types?

Ell: This was actually a really fun part of designing the game!

For the most part, we just picked names that either represented the “area” the bee was found, or just an adjective for that area (i.e. “Forest”, or “Frosty”). For a lot of the bee sprites, I actually designed them after we’d given them names — outside of the first few bees, which were based on real bees, the rest I just made up as I went along!

The Latin names used in-game are just straight-up literal translations of the names (as far as we could determine anyway).

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With so many areas to explore, what biome are you most excited for players to delve into? Which biome took the most time to create?

Ell: I think for me, the Swamps are both my favorite place and the place I ended up spending a lot of time tweaking. They’re usually the first biome the player comes across after leaving the forest islands so it’s quite a big change.

I spent a lot of time trying to make it feel like a very different place — lots more water with rivers all over the place, always raining, trees that grow in the shallow water, fog that drifts past, even light-up flowers. Lots of things to just really hit home that this is a whole new area, helped by the fact that you also meet a few new “types” of bees here (nocturnal bees and bees that are “grumpy” and need to have a smoker used first).

I went through so many different color palettes for the area, too. At one point they were going to be purple!

Apcio Wild Bee Hive Menus

Building an entire game based on bees is a big undertaking that requires a lot of love. What got you involved with bee conservation, and why did you decide to share that love with the world through a video game project?

Ell: To be honest, it wasn’t actually ever what I set out to do!

Originally it was just the fact I had a lot of time during lockdown. I’d always wanted to make a game, and we’d been playing some old Minecraft mods. I was like, “I have so much time. I could try making a game based on this idea and just see what happens.”

It was only when the game then had a demo and we were sharing it with people that I realized people were really enjoying it and that we could use it as a platform to do some good.

To learn more about bee behaviors for APICO, did you have to go study real bees? What were the most interesting bee facts you learned that helped with development?

Ell: When I started drafting up the concept for the game, I did end up doing a lot of research on it just to see what things were involved in beekeeping and just with general bee behavior as it all fed back into what stuff we could do in the game and what mechanics would be fun to try and replicate!

There’s definitely a bunch of stuff that isn’t quite accurate (but also, there are magic bees, and you can teleport so… not exactly going for real life here!)

As more people played the demo, we attracted real beekeepers to the game, and it was really lovely talking with them all and learning new things.

APICO Bee Simulation Crafting Table Windows

What was the biggest hurdle you faced when building APICO, and how did you overcome it?

Ell: I think the biggest hurdles, for the most part, weren’t technical (although multiplayer and console porting certainly had some problems!) but more emotional/mental.

It’s an incredible amount of work to make a game (surprise!), and it can sometimes be very overwhelming and hard to get yourself motivated to keep going. I definitely found that if I woke up one day and knew I didn’t really want to work on APICO, I just… wouldn’t work on it.

I’d go do other stuff for the day, and usually, after a few days, I’d get the itch to work on it again. I think that applies to a lot of creative things, really. You can’t just force it and it’s okay to not work on it sometimes. You’re not betraying the game or your players or even yourself by having a break from it.

Also, actually, just playing your game! As a developer, you spend a ridiculous amount of time, in-game, not actually just playing the game and enjoying it (a good example being that one of Whitethorn’s developers who has been working on the console porting with me has barely played any further in the game than just hanging about the town you start in), so it’s good to remind yourself of what it is you’re actually making and remember it’s not all endless bugs and fixes (although it does feel like it is!)

Related: Minecraft Bees Become CPU Powerhouses In Impressive PC Build

The crafting system for APICO uses a number of tools, did you have tools you wanted to include that didn’t make the final cut? Are there plans to add other crafting tables and items in later content?

Ell: I actually got up my old game design doc for APICO for this question, and to be honest, I think, for the most part, all of the original ideas ended up making it into the game in some form!

The smoker was originally going to be some handheld tool, but as the game developed, we realized it made more sense as a “machine” like all the other things in the game. There was also supposed to be a magnifying glass for some way of inspecting species, but that’s actually going to end up being used in one of the content updates later on, too (spoilers!)

For future content, there’s definitely going to be some new crafting stuff, specifically around solitary bees (bee hotels) and butterflies (butterfly nets) — I won’t say too much more on that stuff just yet though, as there are some fun surprises planned.

APICO’s mission to spread information about bees is so important and relevant to the climate change crisis, what is the biggest takeaway you would like players to have when playing through APICO?

Ell: I think, unfortunately, the biggest takeaway I’d want players to learn is something not even added to the game yet, and that’s around solitary bees!

We see a lot of stuff about saving the bees, but a lot of it can focus just on honeybees when there are hundreds of different solitary bee species out there that don’t live in hives! This is something I definitely learned a lot more about while making APICO, so one of the reasons we have this future content update with solitary bees and butterflies is to make more people aware of the world of bees outside of just honey and beekeeping, as well as other pollinators, that can be just as important.

It’s a shame it’s not something that could make the 1.0, but I think it’s sort of fitting that it was something I learned myself as the game developed and that as my awareness has grown, so too will the game as these new updates come out!

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APICO will be available on PC on May 20, 2022 (World Bee Day), and will be released on console during the summer of 2022.