A Honeycomb of Mediocrity
Bees are amongst the many understood creatures. They play such a crucial role in maintaining life on this little blue ball that holds the only life we’re aware of. Their little journeys to pollinate flowers, create honey and thrive within their hives are filled with more fate, destiny and power than we understand. Ultimately, they hold the responsibility of the only life we’re aware of in the universe in the palm of their hand.
Now given this grandiose speech and purpose, what better way to respect this than creating Bee Flowers: Save the Garden, a puzzle/strategy game in which you must rotate paths to pollinate flowers?
Jokes aside, that is the premise of Afil Games’ new title; with its simple design and ideas, can it be thrilling? To answer this we’ll begin by inspecting, what is usually, the centre stone of any thriving game… gameplay.
Rotation and Repetition
You’re dropped straight into stages, of which there are thirty, with no tutorial and no handholding, something I respect. This admiration would continue as I pieced together the main gimmicks along with controls, and breezed through the first few stages. This is when any positive feelings left residing in me departed.
Stages consist of various paths of differing types (typically straight, curved or two curves joined together) that have been shuffled, leaving you to rearrange them. Your goal? Lead your bee to pollinate all flowers in the level, then leading it back to your hive. Sounds simple, and it can be, however there are times when even the gentle stream meets a stubborn stone, that stone in this case being tedious path solving problems.
In addition to this, I hope you enjoy geometry as the sole tool left at your disposal is rotation. As you most likely suspect, this is the root of the tedious nature, constantly rotating every possibility in the hopes the path you uncover will be the correct one. Sometimes stages will have a simple solution – these stages are extremely welcome – however these aforementioned ones involving mindless rotation bring the experience down heavily, unfortunately occupying each stage you play more often than not.
Lack of Innovation and Mechanics
If for some reason these puzzles initiate brain fog or some other form of ineffective brain activity, there has very kindly been hints placed here. What are they exactly? Lines that show you exactly the path you need to create to the finish. If you’d like a more subtle restart (I wouldn’t blame you) you can shuffle all the pieces in hopes that things become more clear. Little features like this, attempt to salvage what is already a lost cause, yet provide a smidge of staying power.
My final point about gameplay, and one that is most detrimental of all, is the blatant lack of any new mechanics, elements or just about any enjoyment introduced throughout Bee Flowers: Save the Garden. The compromise introduced for this is just adding more bees to control. Riveting I know. On a whole, gameplay suffers from a feature plaguing many of Afil Games’ titles, complacency.
Repetitive Level Structure
This flooding of complacency also seeps through into the level design, repetitive and predictable. Your journey will begin with moments of “ah so that’s how you do this”, yet upon discovery Bee Flowers: Save the Garden reveals itself as a one trick pony. The stage designs usually consist of creating a path into the centre where a double space must be used to allow for the bees to crossover, reaching their respective hives; whilst this philosophy for stage creation can be effective, especially the first few times, the very fact it occupies each and every stage dampens the overall experience.
One aspect I can give Bee Flowers: Save the Garden credit in however, is the stages following the introduction of a fourth bee. For whatever reason, something seemed to click within the developers, allowing for complex stage designs. Some of them left me perplexed for a good while, all the more fulfilling when the solution wasn’t just randomly testing paths, instead feeling thought out. Unfortunately, this is too little too late, given the thirty stages forming this title, only around five are actually notable.
A Buzzing Letdown
Bee Flowers: Save the Garden is an amalgamation of letdowns, missed potential and repetitive gameplay and level design. A set routine to complete stages and lack of innovation bring it down, meaning it won’t be making the top ten of anything anytime soon, aside from maybe worst puzzle titles of 2025.
Important Links
Third Time’s the Charm? Bee Flowers: Save the Garden Buzzes onto PC & Console – https://www.thexboxhub.com/third-times-the-charm-bee-flowers-save-the-garden-buzzes-onto-pc-console/
Buy, Optimised for Xbox Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bee-flowers-save-the-garden/9NR3KM9WWJNM/0010
There’s an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bee-flowers-save-the-garden-xbox-one/9N76WB7DF8K9/0010
An Xbox Bundle, anyone? – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bee-flowers-save-the-garden-xbox-bundle/9NL94HMBMB07/0010
Or Windows + Xbox Bundle – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/bee-flowers-save-the-garden-windows-xbox-bundle/9P1F13G4BJ4B/0010
