Monkey Needs Water Badly

I never thought I would compare two games like Tokyo Jungle and Post Void to a new title hitting the indie scene, but by God the monkeys have found a way.  On a scorching hot day, kilometers away from the sea, a lone monkey looks to make it to aquatic sustenance.  As their adventure progresses more monkeys look to follow the trail of puddles, oases, and fountains to survive the death-dealing heat, motorized vehicles, and the inevitability of gravity.

Warm Monkey takes an arcade-like, two buttons and a joystick, approach to traversing the map.  One button jumps and one button grabs, using these to vault over brush, walls, and shrubbery and grabbing onto trees to reach rooftops and to scale from tree to tree.  There’s a lot of ground to cover, and your monkey will get thirsty very quickly; an ever-depleting bar indicates your thirst and finding any water will help satiate your hydration.  Smaller puddles will handle smaller needs for a moment, but bigger pools will allow a pause on the ever-ticking timer.  Unless you’re handling a horde of monkeys, every ten seconds of movement a new monkey spawns.

This ever-increasing group of monkeys follows you, each just as thirsty as you are.  These additional monkeys are your extra lives. If the heat or traffic put you down, one of the additional monkeys will make haste to meet you at your last resting place and will allow you to take control with a small invincibility window.  The AI of the monkeys is touted by the developers as, “unpredictable,” but I would lean more into “hilariously stupid,” as you’ll see your acquaintances bypass open water and perish, or walk directly into traffic and perish, or vault from trees and buildings aiming for the bushes, and perish.  The map is vast and wide, peppered with landmarks that breathe life into the pixelated scenery.  Sprawling dragon trees, populated lakes, city buildings with multiple fountains: each landmark is worth detouring to, not only for the massive point boost to your run’s score, but also because they’re all interesting to look at and immerse yourself within the sweltering city.

But the bread and butter of Warm Monkey is the sound design. My goodness.  Soft drums and ambient instrumentals fill the white noise between gaps of aquatic nourishment as splashing around twists the audio like you’re trying to find your favorite AM radio station.  It provides this eclectic shot of serotonin knowing your monkey is cooking and can take a spare moment to just indulge in the cool water.  By contrast, traversing out into the chaotic rampages of the several roads between you and the sea is hellish.  Being a monkey trying to dodge several dozen cars is blisteringly tense as purposely peaking decibels slammed into your eardrums.  Hearing the repeated crunch of your fellow monkeys who were unsuccessful in their journey while multiple engines stack their audio to a crackling fever pitch, combined with a high ringing like you just received tinnitus from your journey: this is but one of several roads, and all of them are emotionally draining but impeccably designed.

That said, while runs are short and frantic, there’s plenty of room for improvement.  Keeping up with current topics: the roads.  While they’re debilitating, nerve-wracking, and beautifully chaotic: they’re not really fun to traverse.  The beginning roads are by the numbers and provide a nice tutorial-like environment to prep yourself to cross a death zone by any means necessary, but the later roads just feel unfair by default.  What I imagine is the final stretch of road before the sea, an 8 to 10 lane highway, is so intrusively luck-based that there’s a reason only a smattering of monkeys have actually completed their objective (1.7% of the game’s player count on Steam, as of this writing I am not one of them.).  It’s tough, not in a longing-survival sense, but more in the fact you’re given 10 coins to flip and you better be right on all of them.

The isometric camera used can make traversing high buildings and trees a hassle.  While in the air you are guaranteed to miss your landing zone at least a few times, which is doubly obnoxious as your crater distance is very, very short.  Damage is taken off your thirst meter, so a wrong jump will not only cripple your health, but also probably kill your AI friends who will definitely jump off a building if you do.  Lastly, the tutorial is presented before each run is tedious, though hitting Start will skip it. I found that out by complete accident trying not to complete it for the 14th time.

I’m going to keep trying to get the monkey to the sea, because despite all its flaws, Warm Monkey is still an adrenaline-kicking few minutes avoiding cars, praying for rain, and beating the clock hoping this monkey can be the coolest of them all.

7/10