Honeymancer is one of the cutest tower defense games I’ve ever played. This adorable bear is a honeymancer, able to turn honey from her bees into magic spells to defeat the invading robots and save the forest.
Honeymancer
Like most tower defense games, Honeymancer begins with a threat to a home base. Players need to ensure that the robots can’t destroy all the trees, that the main character doesn’t run out of honey, or the main character doesn’t run out of HP while defending her part of the forest.
Gameplay
Our cute little bear protagonist has a variety of weapons at her disposal; she can choose from honey bombs, hornet nests to plant in the ground like mines, or heat-seeking bee hordes to take down the machines coming into the forest to destroy the trees and leave its denizens homeless.
Currently, players can only bring two spells into the field at a time, but it looks like we’ll be able to unlock more slots to bring a bigger arsenal with us when the full game is available. However, the Dummy Target was broken, so I didn’t get to try that one out. I’m hoping it’s as cool as it sounds, though.
Use Powers
The other powers allow players to tailor their weapons to the needs of the moment, so I’m pretty excited about being able to unlock more slots later on. The demo is pretty tiny, all things considered, but you can easily see where the game will be expanded once Honeymancer is fully released.
On the battlefield, players have a limited amount of honey and have to defend a limited number of trees. The robots will attack you and try to cut down the trees with ever-increasingly dangerous weaponry. The bots start out as little saw critters, but they get faster and more dangerous, gaining more speed and eventually fire bombs and fiery explosives to take out you and the trees.
Once you run out of health, leave the forest, or all the trees have been cut down, players are forced back to their little hut in the woods. There, they can refill their honey, plant more flowers to get more total honey, reconfigure their weapons, and will probably have more features in the future.
As players make it further and further into the waves of enemies, they gain more and more seeds from the creatures of the forest as thanks, and these can be used to upgrade the amount of honey they can carry with them.
The Pros of Honeymancer
This is game is so very, very simple, yet so very, very fun. I don’t understand how something this basic can be so addictive. It’s wonderful, cute and has beautiful pixel graphics, a cute bear, and cute bees even! The robots are cartoonish and fun to kill. The movement is great and everything about this game is super polished. The music is wonderful, and the sound is mostly great.
I love the idea of being able to swap out my weapons to fit my playstyle. All the weapons seem to be pretty balanced, so you can win with almost any combination. The action and movement is easy and fun. It takes a few minutes to get used to, but it’s just wonderful once it clicks in your head.
The Cons of Honeymancer
Why is refilling your honey so very loud compared to all the other sounds in the game? There is no volume balancing either, so I had to turn the game’s volume down, and that made me sad. That was the only sound in Honeymancer that was really loud in comparison to. Maybe it was because I always play on headphones? I’m not sure, but I would like to be able to adjust the music volume separately from everything else if possible. Here is a list of things I hope is added to the full release:
- I want to be able to reconfigure the buttons.
- I would like to be able to play on a controller, and I would also love to see this for Steam Deck.
- I couldn’t figure out how to pull up flowers after they had been planted, and I wanted to replace my flowers with sunflowers to get more overall honey.
- I’m hoping the full release has some way to replant or heal trees.
- I want to pet the bees! Let me play with them. Let me love them.
Overall, I’m in love with Honeymancer and wishlisted it immediately. Such a cute and fun little game!