Not all bees can fly

Let's take a look at Apiary, the newest game from Stonemaier, which immediately got surrounded by a lot of hype.

Theme

After the unfortunate demise of humanity, some species had to rise and fill the void. This was none other than bees.
In Apiary you play as bees who have evolved into sentient creatures, learned everything from the remnants of humanity and advanced even further technologically. Now you are travelling in space, visiting and pollinating planets. This theme of space travelling bees is somewhat apparent in the game: your Mothership is moving between planets as you collect resources, you expand your hive with hexagonal space tiles, create carvings, and workers have to keep hibernating often.

Gameplay

As usual in Stonemaier games, accessibility is at the forefront. Rules and gameplay are pretty straightforward and we were playing in no time. The iconography is clear, and for the rare case of not understanding some of the more complex tiles, there is a nifty appendix listing everything.

The game structure is simple: On your turn you either place a worker on an action spot, or retrieve all of your workers. Worker bees are basically 4-sided dice that show their strength value. The bigger the strength, the better your action will be, with each action having some rule for this. Strength 4 bees can activate the special boosted effect of actions. Whenever workers are retrieved or bumped off of a spot, their strength goes up, or if they were already value 4 they have to hibernate.

Hibernating means losing the worker and putting one of your tokens in the Hibernation Comb to claim a bonus, plus there is also an end-game majority scoring to go for. Hibernating is also the timer of the game: if every spot is filled up, the game is over and you tally up points.

Here’s a shortened rundown of the 6 possible actions:

Explore: move the Mothership some spaces orthogonally, then claim basic resources. New spots have explore tokens on them, otherwise planets show resources you get. Planets will become more fruitful with repeated visits.

Advance: here you can buy new hex-tiles for your hive. Farms give income and storage for resources; Recruits give ongoing abilities; Developments are powerful one-time effects. You have some of the usual euro staples, like getting bonuses you cover, and only being able to build adjacent to already placed tiles.

Research: draw Seed cards. These are multi-use cards that you can either discard for their special effect, or for a single basic resource, or with certain effects you could “plant” them for their end-game scoring condition.

Convert: you can exchange resources or cards into other resources or cards, plus this is the main way to gain wax or honey, which are the more advanced resources in the game.

Carve: here you can get hex-tiles that have end-game scoring effects. You can only come with a power 4 worker though.

Grow: this is the action for getting new workers, which you always need as strength 4 bees hibernate, plus you can buy extensions for your board to have more spaces for hexes.

As I don’t want to just copy-paste the rulebook here, allow me to mention some more important details:
- You have limited storage capacity, so resource management has an additional layer to it
- With certain effects you can go up on the so-called Queen's Favor track. This is basically just for end-game points, though you can sometimes spend it for something.
- There is an asymmetry between players: you all get a differently shaped hive with different bonuses, and you can also choose a faction with diverse starting and end-game effects.

There are a bunch of things you will get points from both during the game and at the end. Generally you want to fill your hive and extensions as best as you can with tiles, get carvings and plant seed cards for their bonuses, go high on the Queen track and win in the hibernation majority scorings.

That's the gist of it. Now let’s go into our thoughts about the game.
Keep in mind we have only played 2p games.

Our Thoughts

I like how smooth the worker placement is. Because of this ‘place or retrieve’ mechanic, there are no end of round phases, so turns (and gameplay in general) are snappy. I also like the idea of the workers having a power level and improving.
However most often I don’t feel a big difference between a strength 1 or strength 3 worker. You can usually get what you need anyway.
I am usually not a fan of overly tight games either, but worker-placement here is very loose. Of course you don’t necessarily want to bump off enemy workers, because then their strength increases and their owner can use them again, but you can also bump off your own workers. So you can mostly do whatever you want without big compromises.

But the bigger problem is the 6 actions you can take, because while most of them are useful and important, there are some that you will only do rarely. So out of the 6 actions, you most often explore for resources, or buy hex tiles for your hive. And those 2 actions just aren’t exciting enough to carry the game.

Hexes are actually the most fun part of the game as I love hexes and building stuff. I just wish there was more nuance to this, as there are only a few tiles that have adjacency rules, otherwise you can just place them wherever you want.

Finally, although art is subjective I have to mention the game board. It has texts with different font styles and lines dividing the actions - it’s just not aesthetically pleasing. It’s a pity, because otherwise the resources and bees are lovely, and the box art is amazing.

All in all, there are good ideas and mechanics in the game, but nothing really stands out, and games can feel quite samey after a few plays.
As with every game though, you mileage may (and probably will) vary.