So one day a random bear discovers there exist flowers that — for reasons unknown — produce coins whenever shaken, and afterwards quickly concocts a scheme to become the richest-bear ever known. However — not wishing to spend the rest of his life shaking flowers about — the entrepreneurial bear then comes to you for aid, mentioning how the two of you might even be able to convince some local bees to join. Thus goes the premise to Honey Beellionaire (out now, free), Tamas M.’s addition to the wildly-popular genre of Clicker Games that’ve lately managed to take both the App Store and Steam by storm.
The game starts you off with a flower that one may — as expected — commence tapping for coins, with the flower’s various petals dynamically-shaking in reaction to the specific-locations you’ve chosen to tap. The game will then quickly direct you to use those coins to increase your own tapping-level, which nets you even more coins with every last tap, as well as ordering you to acquire a lucrative Queen Bee. Although this Queen Bee won’t necessarily do the least bit towards coin-gathering — or at least not directly — she will commence to lay eggs over time, which is the second-most valuable currency around.
Like in various earlier games — such as Clicker Heroes (our review) — you can enlist various helpers to do all that tedious flower-clicking for you, all of whom cost an ever-increasing sum of gold. What’s different here is that you’ll additionally need a single egg with which to hire each of these industrious worker-bees, which isn’t really a problem early on as you’ll be stockpiling those bee eggs way faster than the requisite cash. Further funds — and eggs — can then be spent to empower these bee-groups not through leveling, but rather by increasing the size of their specific swarm (which — much like Clicker Heroes — will also receive additional boosts at specific swarm-size milestones).
One unexpected oddity — compared to other similar games — is that these various bee swarms won’t initially deposit their findings directly into your account, and will instead leave gold sitting about until you collect it yourself. Furthermore is that these swarms won’t seek out any additional-funds until you’ve first collected what’s already available, meaning that — at least early on — there’s no true away-mode within Honey Beellionaire. This — however — can be changed once you begin delving into the buying of upgrades, a variety of options that — once purchased with gold alone — will add assorted perks to your bee army (such as enabling a specific swarm-group to finally perform auto-depositing).
So — while Honey Beellionaire will initially hold you as a captive audience — you’ll quite quickly achieve the ability to walk away for however long you desire, a feature that Beat Bop: Popstar Clicker (our review) was sorely missing. Another feature lacking in Beat Bop: Popstar Clicker — and even Clicker Heroes, no less — was there being any sort of offered direction after one finishes the initial-tutorials (beyond amassing more power). This isn’t so in Honey Beellionaire, however, where players are constantly given randomly generated quests — based on their current wealth-level — for them to strive for next (with veritable gobs of cash awarded after completion).
Unfortunately — despite these direction-giving quests — a sense of purpose is perhaps where Honey Beellionaire actually suffers the most compared to its brethren, since they let you chase things other than purely money itself. In Clicker Heroes you have the option to see just how far you can sanely thrust yourself into enemy-territory your next go around, and in Beat Bop: Popstar Clicker you move onwards to ever greater venues. Although Honey Beellionaire is by no means a horrible abomination of any sort, we unfortunately must — as an honest review — take a deeper look into why the game suffers from this particular deficit (as the premise could otherwise be on the verge of greatness).
Honey Beellionaire does let you pack shop — once you have enough money — and move (sans resources) to a different-looking meadow, wherein the player will gain various buffs to their coin-gathering power (allowing them to amass money faster than before). While this might initially seem similar to Clicker Heroes in premise, the key difference lies within its carry-over perks which — beyond letting you earn gold faster — also let you watch as you retackle past mighty-foes with new relative ease. All an expedited gold-making rate in Honey Beellionaire does is let you more quickly rebuild your previous empire, and also dig faster through the reset upgrade options than previously before.
Even if you’re really just raising money for the purpose of eventually raising even more money in all other successful Clicker Games, the subtle ways in which they make you tangibly feel that growth is a serious part of their charm. Instead the only thing in Honey Beellionaire you’ll really notice is that you now have numbers going up even faster, and that you’re able to click the various upgrade-purchase buttons faster as well. Even the ability to eventually buy permanent bee-cloners — that stay with you after a move — don’t change this, since they just make your swarm-sizes slowly increase without any effort.
Maybe it’s just my personal opinion, but a narrative of adversity — either through monsters, or a rocker’s rags-to-riches journey — is needed in order to frame all this action within a meaningful-light. I know I previously came down fairly hard on Beat Bop: Popstar Clicker for being harsher on its players than Clicker Heroes, but — all things considered — the game at least always left you filling as though progress was occuring. The only place you’ll truly be going in Honey Beellionaire is to a different-looking background — with a different-looking flower to click on — and bee swarms that grow faster as well, and yet you still won’t feel as though anything tangible was accomplished.
The other issue — albeit far-lesser — plaguing this game is that you’re often asked to watch an ad upon tapping the bonus box carrying butterfly, yet 99% of the time this will result in the game telling you no ads are currently available. As such these boxes will often promise you with rewards, but then never dole them out because — for reasons unfathomable — the utilized ad server has decided you can’t have an ad right now. Unfortunately the denial of these bonuses — whether they be Gold, or Premium Gems — does very little to impact the real dilemma: none of your resources — whether obtained in-game, or even IAP-acquired — may be used to secure any meaningful progress.
Unless Tamas releases an update wherein our entrepreneurial-bear has some goal to work towards — beyond money itself — I just can’t recommend this game, especially when far superior options already exist (unless you positively love the idea of tapping flowers).
Verdict
Honey Beellionaire features solid-controls — colorful graphics — and even lacks any attempts at player exploitation, yet still — quite sadly — has a hard time holding a proper candle again nearly any of the meaner-ilk dwelling within the genre of Clicker Games. The chief-most problem here is one of accomplishment, or — to be more precise — the fact that your mission to endlessly aid your bear friend will never leave you feeling as though anything has been overcome. Although playing the game is utterly pointless as things currently stand, Honey Beellionaire could potentially become a true contender should Tamas ever add a meaningful in-game yardstick for you to measure yourself against.