Loot Monkey-TiC

Loot Monkey: Bling Palace (Switch) Review

When you look at the Nintendo Switch eShop you will see a wealth of games. The games presented here provide a ton of varying experiences from one another. A lot of ideas are pitched publicly to the average player, waiting to be sold and played. If they happen to be bad, it’s just that they haven’t quite realized their potential. Maybe what they tried doing just went wrong altogether. Or of course, there could be ones that are just flat-out lazy and want some of that Switch money. I’m not saying Loot Monkey: Bling Palace is one of those games, but um…it sure feels like it.

Graphics

Here’s a tip for the developers out there: There is a difference between making a retro game and doing the bare minimum. Loot Monkey is supposedly a retro throwback but the way it presents itself just feels like a beginner’s effort at putting a game together. The room tiles are super blocky, platforms are tiny and bland, and tinted stock photos make up the backgrounds. Everything’s really tiny on screen, too; I don’t even know what the enemies are! All I know is they are constantly flashing and if you die you are treated to an obnoxiously seizure-inducing death screen.

 

Audio

Sound effects are a mix of stock 8-Bit sounds and stock cartoon-y sounds. True to the game’s description, cheesy synth music plays throughout the game in the background. For whatever reason, once in a rare while, some loud voice will make random comments during gameplay. The description says this is the antagonist of the game but I’m going to need a more convincing voice actor to really sell me on that. And just as the death screens violate the player’s eyes, Loot Monkey‘s Game Over screen violates the player’s ears with a very weird sound that gets increasingly loud as a boot silhouette steps on the monkey.

Gameplay

Loot Monkey: Bling Palace is a very slow and very basic platformer. As your monkey moves across the room like a snail, your goal is to collect every single treasure that appears throughout the estate. Every. Single. One. Leave no stone unturned, and there’s like a million rooms to check up on. Each of them is also filled with hazards. The monkey is a one-hit wonder, and a mere touch from them means an immediate dose of seizure screen.

They can be easily avoided with enough practice, but that means you’ll have to master the game’s clumsy jump range. The monkey always just barely jumps over the enemy, and the game loves to make you jump over things. Beneath that, however, there just isn’t anything worthwhile around here. Nothing of interest is in any of the rooms; they all play boringly out the same without any additional flair.

Verdict

To think, the price for this game is $7. Imagine all of the other indies that could be nabbed for that price! I suppose Loot Monkey: Bling Palace isn’t quite as guilty as certain $10 titles I know of though. It at least had some degree of substance to it as a video game. However, the substance here is plagued with awfully dull designs and features that exist to annoy. I can only give this one a hard pass.

Review copy provided by Tackorama

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