Well this is kind of cool. I am doing my first IPhone game review about a company’s first game… ever. Wonder if this will lead to anything in the future? Who knows. Anyway, Baby Monkey, a game for the IPhone and IPad, was released this month by Kihon games. The game promises buyers a fun game with varying levels, great game play, and catchy music. Is this beginning company’s first game a home run or is it a is it a flop that should be forgotten?
The concept of Baby Monkey is you are a baby monkey riding backwards on a pig, for some unexplained reason, and your job is to bash through walls, eggs, and sandcastles while collecting bananas to rack up points. Sounds like fun right? Well… all this game amounts to is watching a baby monkey ride on a pig continuously. The infinite level is only varied occasionally when you have either the monkey or the pig jump up to avoid an obstacle or a grab banana. However, your ability to actually accomplish these goals is hindered because Baby Monkey relies on two artificial buttons to cause the pig or monkey to jump. I do not know what it is but every IPhone game I have played that used artificial buttons ended up being a waste of time due to dodgy detection. The same is true here, as you will often press the button with ample time to spare only for the little monkey to be flung off the pig in a not too horrendous fashion leaving you to return to the start of the endless level. This bad detection might just be because Kihon is still figuring out a few issues with coding or something else so it can be forgiven. However, this dodgy detection and a few other issues does make the game frustrating to play. For example if you miss a slightly browned banana, just go ahead and quit. Browned bananas act as a catalyst of sorts, which causes your pig to suddenly gain star power, I am not kidding here, and smash through several obstacles in a row. If you fail to catch the brown banana, you will be unable to make it through the five or six obstacles without your monkey being flung off the pig like some furry cowboy off a bull.
“But what about this varying level thing,” I hear you asking, “Surely with an ever changing scenery like they promise on the game’s description even just a continuous running game might be fun.” Well, I am sure a set of different levels with different obstacles would have made the game more interesting. However in this aspect, Kihon has dropped the ball. You start off with fences and pumpkins to jump over, which suddenly change to cactus and campfires, which change to beach balls and sandcastles, which change to Easter eggs. This friends is not varying levels. This bad attempt at variety just gives the game an atmosphere that some random pig and monkey are trying to escape and just off screen is a prop moving van which is low on gas so some handy men are throwing out props so the driver can make it to the nearest gas station. Again, this is Kihon’s first game so maybe the budget just was not there to give the game actual variety such as different levels with diverse enemies or obstacles to dodge with varying levels of difficulty.
However you can only forgive so much. The song for Baby Monkey is grating on the mind. The song was actually made by Parry Gripp, the person behind the infamous Nom Now Song. I do not know what happened, but between the time of the Now Song and this he must have lost the “Catchy Song” gene. The Baby Monkey song is, in my opinion, terrible. It resorts to the Duel Master’s theme trick that if you say something a lot people will start to like it. “Baby Monkey” takes up about 75 percent of the songs lyrics with the rest being filled in by mostly random phrases. For example, “The world has gone insane.” How exactly has the world gone insane? It is a monkey on a pig! What does that have to do with anything else? This combined with the fact that while you are playing, this song is on a continuous loop makes the song almost as annoying as “The Song that Never Ends.”
To sum things up, Baby Monkey is not the greatest game. Its gameplay is boring, repetitive, and frustrating, its variety is false, and its song is maddening. If you are really curious about what this game is about, look at the promotional video below. If you like the game then get it. It is a good game to have on hand to entertain your child or when you have a few seconds to kill. Plus if you do buy Baby Monkey, you can help Kihon games along so they can start to make some better games.
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