Progression through invention and interaction with the world like what is seen in Minecraft has become a popular gameplay style in recent years and is now featured in Apico, an upcoming indie title. RPGs have added elements of crafting, foraging, and building as a part of open-world exploration, and simulation games have continued to add improved versions of these mechanics in both AAA and indie titles. Apico is a bee-keeping simulator game that has combined many of these mechanics with adorable pixelated graphics, for gameplay that is similar to the Forestry mod for Minecraft.
Apico's gameplay is designed to teach players the importance of conservation through interactive beekeeping mechanics. Like in Minecraft, players will find themselves in a unique world that can be interacted with using tools like axes, pickaxes, and shovels. With these tools, resources like stone and wood can be obtained, which will then be used to build everything from homes to apiaries. However, instead of automating machines using Redstone and fighting monsters in dark caves, Apico players will focus on obtaining wild bees that can be raised and bred for new species.
Apico shares many similarities with Minecraft's Forestry mod, created by SirSengir, which added beekeeping and tree breeding to Minecraft's base gameplay. Players will find a variety of wild beehives in their world that can be harvested for bees and honey. The bees can then be bred in the hives, or brought home and placed in apiaries to deposit honey in frames. Breeding bees in apiaries also allows players to cross-pollinate flowers close by, unlocking new flower species. Unlike Minecraft's Forestry mod, extracting honey is less difficult, with devices that don't require power sources to be run. Players can also take their honey and ferment it to make mead, with numerous infusion options available to create different flavors.
Apico Offers Helpful Tutorials To Speed Up Mastery Of Game Mechanics
Gameplay in Apico is aided by a quest journal. This journal, much like the quest books for the Minecraft Forestry mod, detail how to use each device, as well as other important mechanics like bee breeding, tree tapping, and fermentation. However, Apico takes ease of access to another level with an option that would be greatly beneficial in future Minecraft gameplay updates. Players can have multiple machine interfaces open at once. This allows items like frames to be moved directly from the apiary to the uncapper, or tanks of water to the fermenter from the barrel, without having to first put it in the inventory and carry them to the next machine. Because of this, players can tend to a large number of devices at once, creating more efficient and intuitive gameplay.
Currently, Apico is planned for release early in 2022. However, the Apico demo is available on Steam and offers players a generous amount of gameplay to test out for free. This includes 9 bee species to search and breed for. The finished game intends to implement dozens of species, as well as other advanced levels of gameplay. Players will also be able to set out on the seas around their bee-keeping archipelago in search of other islands. It is possible that like Minecraft, these locations planned for the final game could possess different biomes, and bee species entirely unique to such areas.
Source: Steam