Hungry Monkey – Tilt & Jump to get the Mega Banana
by Jonathan Lonczak
Aug 24, 2011 7:38 AM –
Install
Hungry Monkey – Hunting the MEGA banana. Help starving Mr. Monkey to eat as many bananas you can. Be careful, there are many obstacles in your way to the MEGA banana. The higher you get, the more points you earn! Try to get as many bananas you can without falling down, you will be rewarded with combo bonus!
Price: Free
Tested on: Sony Xperia Play
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Cute jumping platformer in the style of Doodle Jump!
- Interesting new concept of jumping based on collection of objects!
- OpenFeint social achievement system support!
- Four levels of difficulty!
Cons
- Annoying game over sound effect with no music to deaden it.
- No OpenFeint challenges.
- Great disparity between difficulty levels.
Features:
Hungry Monkey is a Doodle Jump style jumping game for Android, but instead of jumping from platform to platform you are jumping from tree to tree. The object of Hungry Monkey is to climb to the top of the trees to get to the Mega Banana! You will have to jump from tree to tree eating bananas and dodging the dangerous insects along the way. It features four levels of difficulty and OpenFeint social achievement system support!
In order to achieve the main objective you will need to guide your monkey to the top of the tree using your phone’s accelerometer controls. As you tilt your phone from side to side it guides the monkey from tree to tree. However, you can only jump when you pick up bananas or land on a cloud. This means that you need to guide your Hungry Monkey only to where there is bananas to give him energy or clouds for him to bounce on.
There are four levels of difficulty to Hungry Monkey: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Crazy. In the easy difficulty mode the bananas are lined up so that you can easily jump from one banana to another without any fear of falling down. Your only worry while playing this setting is that you might accidentally bump into one of the moving insects and be knocked down. As you increase in difficulty the bananas are spaced farther and farther apart. You are also attacked much more frequently by the flying insects on greater difficulty levels.
Finally, Hungry Monkey also features OpenFeint support. Currently there are no achievements to be offered through the platform, but there is an online leader board for each of the four difficulties. This allows you to compare yourself to others and will inspire you to revisit the game more frequently to keep up with the competition.
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Hungry Monkey Game Play 1
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Hungry Monkey Game Play 2
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Hungry Monkey Game Play 3
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Hungry Monkey High Score
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Hungry Monkey Score Breakdown
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Hungry Monkey Open Feint
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Hungry Monkey Title Screen
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Hungry Monkey Help
Fun Factor:
Hungry Monkey is amusing for kids to play, but as an adult I did not find it very appealing. The difficulties seemed of too great a disparity. When playing on easy mode I felt like I was playing Abduction! on kid mode where you can never die. When I played this game on hard difficulty mode I would find myself dying often within only 5 seconds of playing the game.
I was also extremely annoyed by the sound effects to the game. I was already having difficulty enjoying the game play, but the sound effects when I died just were there to taunt me. Whenever your monkey falls from the tree you hear a “Waa Waa Waaa” sound like you just made an incorrect guess on a game show. At first this sound effect was amusing, but after failing to get very far in the game and having to hear this tone every five seconds it became awfully annoying.
Addictive:
I could see this game becoming more addictive with the addition of new features to the game play or perhaps a level mechanic versus the current endless jumping format. Games like Abduction and Angry Birds have done very well with games featuring endless levels of animal fun and Hungry Monkey could as well. However, the game in its current state didn’t seem real and lacked major replay value. Fortunately with the integration of OpenFeint, I expect to see this change in the future.
Graphics:
The graphics for Hungry Monkey are not bad, but they are also not good. The visuals by themselves are not horrible, but the integration with the game play leaves something to be desired. My biggest gripe with the graphics in this game is the way the monkey jumps.
The premise of the game is that you are a monkey jumping from tree to tree in order to obtain the Mega Banana. Yet in the game you never get the real feeling that the monkey is jumping from tree to tree. Instead the game feels like a monkey is skating over a flat background of trees trying to grab bananas and then falls back when he runs out of them. Branches, vines, or a grabbing/jumping animation should be incorporated in to the game play to give the presumption more credibility and to draw the gamer deeper in to the gaming environment.
Accelerometer, Vibration & Sound:
Hungry Monkey makes use of both the phone’s accelerometer and sound. The game’s accelerometer controls handle as well as any other platform jumper like Doodle Jump or Abduction making this an easy game to play if you had experience with similar games in the past.
One strange addition compared to competitors is the need to tap the touch screen in order to begin jumping. I think this feature is probably a good addition to the game, because it allows the developer more randomness to each level but prevents the hero from dying on his first jump (most of the time).
The sound effects in the game are basic for the monkey jumping and collecting the bananas. The death sound effect is very annoying and should be replaced with a friendlier sound effect in future versions. It is cute the first time you die, but after a few times you just want to mute your phone. Currently there is no musical track, but the addition of this could fix some of the dull spots and make it feel much more enjoyable.