Killer Bean was first revealed back in 2023 by its solo developer, Jeff Lew, via a teaser on Twitter that racked up millions of views. It later appeared at Summer Game Fest 2024, promising intense first- and third-person gunplay, Max Payne-like bullet time, vehicular mayhem, open-world chaos, and more. And technically, the finally released Killer Bean game does include all of that, and it’s impressive that one guy mostly made this by himself. But that’s the last nice thing I can say about Killer Bean.
Out now on Steam via early access, Killer Bean is a bad video game that is not much fun to play, not very nice to look at, and is mostly just a boring slog. In Killer Bean, you play as a deadly bean assassin who mostly kills random thugs that look identical to him while hacking every computer and phone he comes across. The character first appeared in a series of animated shorts and films created solely by Lew through the ’90s and early 2000s.
Sometimes in Killer Bean, you fight cyborg beans or ugly lizard creatures, but mostly it’s identical-looking thugs who are dumber than an actual pile of beans. I often saw enemies look right at me, do nothing, and just stop moving. Sometimes I’d even jump over enemies who’d seen me and land behind them, and they’d lose me. A recent patch claims the enemy AI has been improved. I tested it. I disagree.
There is a story, but I can’t tell you much about it because I ended up skipping cutscenes as they were so plodding and hard to listen to that I started wondering why I was wasting my life playing games at all.
Skip. Skip. Skip. It’s a bean-killing game, I’ll be fine. Just shoot everyone and hack stuff over and over.
That’s mostly all Killer Bean is. You hack things, use guns that feel bad to kill lots of enemies that spawn in waves, and hope the mission doesn’t bug out and break. Sometimes you kill stuff while driving a car or a boat, but I would avoid that as they handle poorly. Also, I couldn’t complete the first mission because of a glitch. Thankfully, there’s an option in the main menu to skip to mission two. And an option to skip to mission five. Hmmm…
After 2 yrs of game dev, I finally have a trailer for KILLER BEAN – the Game! It’s a 1st person/3rd person, open world, roguelike shooter.
Wishlist Killer Bean on #Steam! #pcgaming #videogames #indiegames #screenshotsaturday #killerbean pic.twitter.com/DdAKImqIxt
— Killer Bean (@Real_KillerBean) August 19, 2023
You can dive and activate a bullet-time effect, which you will want to do, as otherwise the massive waves of enemies that spawn will kill you in seconds. I have no idea why Killer Bean tosses so many guards and baddies at you. It’s like the game thinks it’s fun to play. It is not. Every gun takes too long to reload and feels like a peashooter. Your main dual pistols are so bad that I hunted down any gun I could find so I could use that instead of those pieces of junk. The most exciting part of firefights is that, because random citizens and enemies all look the same, you never know who is a threat or not.
There’s an ability that lets you toss a bullet up into the air and then shoot it, and your shot pings off the bullet in the air and hits an enemy. I think. It never worked for me. At least the car works, which is good because otherwise I’d have to walk around the game’s massive but extremely empty and dull maps to get anywhere.
Killer Bean is a bad game. Maybe in a few months, after plenty of updates, it will be better. But for now, stay away. There are many better indie games you can spend your money on. Or you can just buy a sandwich and a drink instead and probably get more enjoyment out of it than you would playing Killer Bean.