BEEzzz Review

Costas Stephanides’s Review

It's GOOddd

Is it a coincidence that this is launched around the same time as the Bee Movie? Can we expect a mass of bee and rat games in the coming months? Time will tell. In the meantime Hands-On have unashamedly released BEEzzz. It has nothing to do with the film and just happens to be a game about bees.

The aim is to fly around the field and harvest the flowers against the clock, why... for the points. There's no convoluted plot, this is a pure puzzle game. The bigger the points you collect for each combo, the more seconds are added to your timer. The combos always comprise of 4 flowers and those involving the rarer colours are worth more points. There is a separate timer for each combo so you are bound by the flowers around.

The puzzle aspect isn't here to blow you away; that falls squarely on the shoulders of the controls and flying. The help section could do with a rewrite, it currently states that 2, 4, 6 and 8 are used to control your bee. That is well and true but it seems that their specific actions are different each time. To make life easy, pressing 5 will home your bee to the nearest highlighted flower. Your bee will head towards it and spin around while it harvests the pollen. You can get around the level just by using the 5 button and carefully using the slingshot method to move to the next flower. We're not sure if this is the intended method but it works quite well and requires a lot more skill than just the standard keys. We've had a little dabble with it here and with each play we are finding something new and getting better with the strange controls. The game definitely grows on you and worth persevering with.

The graphics are pretty standard by today's measure. The backgrounds are detailed and there is even a flower radar around the edge showing the flowers for the next part of the combo. Sound and vibration are also there but don't add much to the whole experience.

BEEzzz is a peculiar one and most definitely the first bee flying sim we've come across. There's nothing negative to say about the game (apart from missing some sort of reward structure), it's just weird but in a good way. If quirky games are your thing then this could be the thing for you.