There are times when reviewing games can be hard, especially when despite however a game may turn out you can sense an earnest desire on the part of the developer to make something good, and it just doesn’t turn out that way. In the case of The Bee Hive, it doesn’t help that this week I played an expanded version of Bee Simulator, not sharing the same play style at all but at least running in the same lane considering there aren’t many bee-oriented titles out there. More than that though, while there’s a certain retro-like charm to some of its elements, it simply doesn’t feel like it’s ready for prime time and the potential for people picking it apart.

Looking through the lens of what was likely intended, this is a 3D action platformer featuring you playing as a bee with a certain limited set of skills, and making your way through various areas trying to collect what amounts to pellets of various colors. This will require that you walk around, explore, take to the air at times, and every once in a while get into a tussle with some other critters like hornets and spiders. Your capabilities are pretty limited, but it’s honestly structured to be an all-ages affair, so that’s not entirely surprising.

The problem is that there’s no getting around that this is a very clunky experience from pretty well any angle you choose. The character models have a weirdly primitive look akin to some early CGI kids shows, and there are a lot of reflective surfaces everywhere that go with that vibe. Movement is a bit stiff and the accompanying animations tend to be pretty simple, making for both weaker visuals and things like combat not being very satisfying at all, looking quite a mess at best. While perhaps you could forgive these issues, instead focusing on the game’s approachability, the real problem is with bugs though. In a pretty short time I simply hit too many quirks and glitches, and some of them effectively locked up the game. Regardless of whatever goals it had, or merits, the bugginess of it all is really a killer.