Android games I’ve played in July! Honey Bee Park, Numito, Merge Mend 🐝

A bit less idle than usual this month, but with the usual mixture of casual gameplay and puzzles!

#1: Honey Bee Park

Let’s get the obvious out of the way, Honey Bee Park is heavily inspired by the cutesy incremental Cats & Soup, but with bees.

Review

The basic gameplay loop is your bees collect honey from plants, deposit it at food stations who produce food, then you sell the food for coins. That’s it!

You’ll use these coins to upgrade food stations and unlock new gameplay features, similar to other incremental games. There’s a few other currencies (hearts for “lab” upgrades, royal jelly for “royal lab” upgrades / costumes, bee pollen for improving costumes), all of which are pretty easy to obtain.

The gameplay itself is quite active, with every item requiring manual selling (or it will autosell for a 50% discount) and every “heart” from flowers requiring a manual click.

Generally your main objective will be saving up for the next park level. Each of these will either drastically improve earnings (e.g. with a new bee), or unlock a new feature (e.g. ability to move stations). The new food stations particularly will each offer a drastic increase in earnings, since each new tier generally offers 100-1000x the previous.

This fairly linear upgrade loop means there’s not much to actually think about / plan whilst playing. Instead, you can watch the bees hurrying about their business, and that’s about it! Luckily, there’s lots of outfits to customise them a bit, all of which improve their performance.

There’s also a “bottle pouring” minigame that you’ve seen in a hundred game adverts, which feels quite out of place. It’s a good way to earn extra income multipliers, but a bit more variety would be appreciated.

It’s also worth pointing out there is a serious “wall” in progression around park level 34-35. Instead of progressing a level every hour or two, it will take multiple days to achieve level 34, only to discover it doesn’t help income whatsoever. I suspect I won’t progress much further, since I’m not willing to pay!

Monetisation

Unfortunately Honey Bee Park is heavily monetised, with the combination of powerful (optional) ad boosts and expensive ad removal options.

The full list is:

Adverts for occasional cash gifts.
Adverts to provide a few minutes of 2x collection & production speed.
Adverts to double offline earnings.
Adverts to receive costume items.
Adverts to receive free royal jelly.
Adverts to get “seeds” for minigame.
Payment to remove adverts ($30!).
Payment to double profit ($5).
Payment to receive packs of in-app currencies ($6 - $50).
Payments to buy royal jelly ($1 - $50).

This is a lot of monetisation, regardless of whether it is optional or not. Too much.

Due to how powerful these boosts are, you’re realistically going to want to watch 7-8 adverts back to back each time you open up the game to get all the free items, double speed, etc. Or, of course, pay an absurd amount of money to remove adverts.

I’d happily pay $5 to remove ads, but the current price is absurd, so the devs get nothing except ad revenue!

Tips

Upgrading food stations drastically increases your earnings, but a new food station will increase them even more. Keep an eye on what is being unlocked soon to see if it’s worth saving up.
Each station has a “fill” indicator. If this is mostly empty, you need to upgrade your bees. If it’s mostly full, you need to upgrade your station speed.
The game has a short offline timer, so checking in every hour or so is recommended.
Don’t ignore outfits, or the bottle minigame! They’re not just aesthetic / for fun, they can drastically increase earnings.

That’s it! It’s a straightforward, linear game.

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.3.2:

Gameplay	Park levels	Minigame

#2: Numito

Numito is a cute little puzzle game from the same developer (Juanma Altamirano) as Close Cities, which I reviewed a few months ago.

Review

The core gameplay is quite simple: slide columns of numbers / operators up and down to make the calculation correct. Additionally, you’ll typically need to find calculations that use all the numbers on the board.

As with the developer’s past games, I really appreciate the game’s overall presentation. Clear and simple UI without obnoxious flashing icons / timers / clutter, and core gameplay that can be instantly understood yet requires practice to master. Similarly, a “dark mode” that makes the game suitable for late night playing is great!

Whilst there is a hint system in the game, I didn’t use any or find that they were really needed, you can use trial and error if you need to.

The game’s mechanics are introduced via a series of well presented standalone tutorials, also available later on from the main screen. They essentially boil down to the 3 types of gameplay:

“Multi”: Multiple target numbers need to be made.
“Equal”: Both sides of the equation need to match.
“The One”: Only one solution exists.

As a disclaimer, the developer reached out to me after I enjoyed his previous game (thanks!) informing me of Numito, and mentioned the game was inspired by Typeshift, the same concept but with letters. I didn’t receive any payment / in-app bonuses / anything, this isn’t a sponsored review don’t worry!

Numito’s levels are entirely weekly based, with a free daily puzzle and a free weekly campaign of 24 puzzles around a theme (e.g. maths awards). Whilst this does ensure fresh content, I personally would have preferred a persistent campaign too, instead of reliance on fear of missing out to retain players.

If you like quick mental maths then Numito is an easy download, and whilst it’s perhaps a little too repetitive for longer sessions, I’ll be keeping it installed (as with the developer’s past games) for the occasional quick level or two.

Monetisation

The monetisation is very, very fair!

There’s a 5-second advert between each level, with a single $3ish payment to remove them all, plus:

An extra “Viral” puzzle every day
6 extra hard levels in each weekly campaign
Access to the previous week’s campaign
25 extra hints

For a single payment this is ideal, and is exactly what I look for in an in-app purchase!

Tips

If you’re stuck, try splitting the equation up. For example if you’re playing “Equals”, and you know the right side can equal 4, 6, or 8, keep those in mind and only look at the left side.

There’s not many tips to give, it’s all mental maths!

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.0.1:

Gameplay	Main menu	Weekly campaign

#3: Merge Mend

Yet another merge game, Merge Mend slightly stands apart through a more appealing art style than many of the competitors.

Review

As with many of these merge game, the gameplay is essentially identical. Merge Mend reminds me specifically of a game I mostly completed & reviewed 2 years ago: Medieval Merge. Both have an “overworld” with quests, requiring creating specific items to complete them.

The items to be merged are more visually appealing than other games in the genre, with a nice simple art style standing out amongst a thousand shiny pseudo-3D rivals. The “story” is essentially non-existent, with the quests all working towards the simple goal of expanding your farm / house.

Seasonal events earn you currency that can be used for cosmetic outfits / decorations, otherwise have no purpose. This would be a nice distraction, but the same “energy” is used for the event and the main game!

Overall there’s very little new here, it’s just a well produced merge game. However, the information on where an item comes from, what it produces, and what it merges into is very well presented, letting you follow a chain of multiple items to work out how to obtain your quest item.

Monetisation

As expected, there’s a lot of monetisation! Primarily you’ll be running out of energy, and prompted to pay / watch adverts to refill it through various methods.

There’s also payments to get a whole new game board row, or purchase various packs of items, jewels, or coins. The typical “starter pack”, “booster pack”, “ad-free pack” are all there to convince you to pay, although the quite high prices make them fairly unappealing.

The £6 ($8) payment to receive 30 days of halved energy recharge time, 60 extra energy per day, ad-free “producing” item refills, and ad-free small coin bonuses is likely the best. However, with no forced ads, I’m happy to just wait for my energy to recharge!

Tips

Don’t merge if you haven’t got a goal in mind. It uses up energy (your most valuable resource), and you might merge past an item required later.
As always, space will be the main problem. As such, try to “wrap up” any niche merging missions you do, and sell / redeem any low level items if needed.
Coins should exclusively be used to expand your “bag” (overflow).
Jewels should mostly be used to refill your energy, since this is what actually progresses you.
Keep your board organised! I tend to stack “outside in” with the highest level items on the outside. This lets me easily merge my way up if I receive enough of the low level items, whilst not losing track.
Energy maxes out at 100, and takes 2 minutes each, giving a total of 200 minutes (3.3 hours) to fully refill energy.
Complete lower level quests if they’re available, they’ll give you some sort of reward and unlock the next in the chain.

Screenshots

All screenshots are from version 1.1.1:

Game world	Regular gameplay	Event gameplay