INTRO:
It is not very often that people of very different nationalities would come together to develop games, sometimes far away from home. Q-Games is a rare example of such a get-together, and what it has done would have seemed pleasantly surprising to many.
Of course, it can be argued that the first few titles in Q-Games’ fPixelJunk series are not remarkable enough to be shining examples of what a multinational team of game developers can do. Indeed, PixelJunk Monsters, which is the second entry in the series, would seem to be yet another ho-hum title, and one that can be easily derided as a typical tower defence game albeit one with roots in the Playstation platforms.
Yet, even if one was to play it with this mind-set (this reviewer certainly had a similarly sceptical preconception), the experience of having played PixelJunk Monsters would dispel any notion that it is yet another title to join the then-increasingly crowded tower defence genre.
PREMISE:
There is actually not much of a coherent story in PixelJunk Monsters. In fact, some facets of the game may suggest that PixelJunk Monsters was actually a cobbling-together of disparate ideas; observations that suggest this will be elaborated later.
Anyway, Tiki-Man is the protagonist of the game. Almost immediately, he would seem peculiar to new players. His limbs and the tribal shield on his back may suggest that he was intended to be an anthropomorphic turtle. However, he certainly is not one, especially when he has a tiki mask for an actual head, on top of leaves for a beard.
Tiki-Man has a “flock” of “sheep”. His “flock” of “sheep” appear to be a clutch of infantile versions of Tiki-Man, with pacifiers in their mouths even. Of course, such misleading labels may have been deliberate in the first place, perhaps in an attempt to placate censors or age rating watchdogs.
Anyway, Tiki-Man is having a hard time trying to live a peaceful life with his “flock”. Everywhere he goes, there appears to be monsters with clay masks that are trying to reach his “flock” and turn them into ghosts that fly skywards.
On the other hand, whether Tiki-Man’s way-of-life is in peril or not is not clear. One could have a darker interpretation of the game: he may be trying to bring the fight to the clay-masked monsters by using his flock as bait. Indeed, that he could lose a few without the player suffering a game-over outright.
Either way, it is fortunate for Tiki-Man that he has access to powers and knowledge that allow him to replace trees with armed towers. There is that, and the monsters are too dim-witted to do anything about Tiki-Man’s defensive assets.
TIKI-MAN’S MOVEMENT:
A notable game design about PixelJunk Monsters is that the player is not controlling a cursor that can pop up towers anywhere that the player hovers it over.
Of course, one can argue that being a game that originated in the console platforms, PixelJunk Monsters could not use such a control scheme and has to vest the player’s controls in an actual player character, namely Tiki-Man.
On the other hand, this makes PixelJunk Monsters a lot more different than most other tower defence titles. The player must move Tiki-Man about to convert trees to towers and vice versa, as well as collect the stuff that the monsters drop.
Moreover, the player must avoid having Tiki-Man come into contact with the monsters. If this happens, the player loses gold coins, which somehow spray right out of Tiki-Man as he recovers from the shock of his contact with the monsters.
Initially, Tiki-Man moves just a bit slower than the Spider monster, which is one of the fastest creatures to go after his “flock”. The player may obtain a reward from completing certain levels; this reward allows Tiki-Man to move faster.
The player can control Tiki-Man through three control peripherals. The game was originally made for the PlayStation 3, so a controller with analog sticks would have been the natural default. The player can also use the keyboard to control Tiki-Man, and the keys can be re-mapped to the player’s content.
The mouse is the third peripheral, but an observant player may notice that it is not appropriate for handling Tiki-Man with. His inertia just does not match the speed of the cursor’s movement. Indeed, if the player still insists on using the mouse anyway, PixelJunk Monsters would seem to be a terrible port of a PlayStation title.
COINS & GEMS:
For whatever reason other than following the conventions in the tower defence genre, Tiki-Man needs gold coins in order to somehow convert trees to towers.
For almost every level, except a dastardly one (which will be described later), he starts with some gold to create the first few towers to deal with the relatively easy starting waves. However, to build more in order to counter the increasingly nastier waves, the player needs more coins, and these are mainly obtained through the coins that monsters drop.
(Certain special levels remove this convenience and give the player plenty but limited gold to work with instead.)
Gems are a peculiar resource, because it is rare that tower defence games would implement more than one resource. However, the function of gems would be quickly apparent to those who have experience in strategy games; gems prevent the player that is flushed with gold from splurging on towers and upgrades, thus practically winning the level before it even ended.
Towers that have already been built cannot be improved further with gold. They have to be upgraded in painstaking ways (which will be described later), or upgraded immediately with gems. Gems are also needed to unlock more advanced towers for use and for laying down mines with (more on all these later). Like coins, gems are mainly obtained from looting the remains of defeated monsters.
Most coins and gems that the player would get are obtained via picking them up from monsters that drop them when they are slain.
Not all monsters drop the same amount of gold though; some would drop nothing at all, whereas some others spray coins and gems all over the place in varying amounts. Moreover, the manners in which the coins and gems spray about can differ wildly. Some of them may just drop on the spot where a monster died, whereas some others would be flung in random directions at different speeds, possibly placing them where Tiki-Man cannot reach.
Although the gems have certain value (i.e. each gem yields only one gem), gold coins can be either worth 5 gold points or 10. It is not entirely clear which value a coin would have, because all coins apparently look the same.
Such randomness would not be appreciated by players who do not want factors of luck in their gameplay experience.
Worse, coins and gems that the player cannot reach in time (which is around a minute or so) will blink out of existence.
Fortunately, the game implements some designs that help the player cope with the randomness of the generation of coins and gems.
One of these is the different hitbox that is applied on Tiki-Man for the purpose of the retrieval of gems and coins. This hitbox is slightly different from those for detecting collisions with monsters. As long as the coins or gems touch Tiki-Man’s sprite, they are considered as collected.
The second design is that coins and gems that fell outside of the map will eventually “move” back into the map and stop at its edges, provided that they are still on solid ground. This is convenient.
The last design is Tiki-Man’s ability to attract coins from a distance. Coins that are a few steps away will accelerate towards Tiki-Man.
Unfortunately, this convenience may have been an over-compensation. Coins can overshoot past Tiki-Man, landing at somewhere that is inconvenient. They may even hilariously orbit about him indefinitely. Getting used to the physics of the coins can be an annoying experience.
Gems are not attracted towards Tiki-Man, for better or worse. If they are stuck in some place that Tiki-Man cannot reach, they are forfeit.
TREES:
As mentioned earlier, Tiki-Man must set up defences by converting trees into towers. Conveniently, Tiki-Man can move past trees without running into them.
The trees are usually spaced far enough from each other so that none of them are completely obscured by the others. This is convenient, because the player will need to position Tiki-Man close to a tree to convert it into a tower. However, this is still not ideal.
There are only a few levels where every tree is completely and visually discrete from the rest. In the other levels, the forest is dense enough such that every tree is partially obscured by the rest. Furthermore, the trees in front of Tiki-Man happen to obscure his sprite (from the perspective of the player).
This issue also transfers over to the towers that replace the trees. This can be a problem if the player is trying to reach a tower that is tucked behind another and in front of yet another, either to upgrade it or sell it.
The mouse could not help much either, because the mouse does not have context-sensitive scripts to direct Tiki-Man to a tower that the mouse cursor is hovering over. Indeed, if the player had been playing tower defence titles mainly on the computer platform, PixelJunk Monsters’ limitations can seem uncomfortable.
Fortunately, the tree or tower that Tiki-Man is currently adjacent to blinks red, so the player at least would know which one would be accessed.
Anyway, trees also happen to be sources of coins and gems – if the player can locate which of them actually contain these goodies. There is no visual indicator for which trees have them. Furthermore, although the game seemingly periodically stuff coins and gems into trees, the durations between these periods are not clear.
Fortunately, the player can still utilize these designs and turn them to his/her advantage. The game can seemingly stuff a tree that is already stuffed with gold and gems with even more of these, so there is no need to leave more than one tree in a pristine state.
However, gold coins and gems pop out of trees even more violently than those that come out of slain monsters. This can be aggravating, if the trees happen to be close to bodies of water. (Of course, the player can mitigate this by replacing trees that are near bodies of water with towers.)
OBSTACLES:
Although Tiki-Man can move past trees (and his own home), he can’t move past everything.
The first, and most finicky, obstacles that Tiki-Man encounters are rocks. Ostensibly, he cannot move through them, but it is not always clear which rocks that Tiki-Man cannot or can go through. Large formations of rocks appear to be impassable, but Tiki-Man can sometimes move through smaller rocks, or individual large rocks.
Still, there is some amusement to be had from the rock formations in some levels. They could be cleverly obscuring a shortcut that can be used to move to and fro a critical zone in the map and Tiki-Man’s abode. It is also worth noting here that monsters cannot move through rocks (and trees).
Another major type of obstacle that would be encountered later is water, or any other bodies of fluid. Tiki-Man simply cannot move into or over them; invisible walls block him from doing so, and it so happens that these will occur a bit of a distance away from the edges of the bodies of liquid. This means that any gems that land in this inaccessible region is simply lost to the player.
Water does not stop flying creatures, obviously. Yet, although they are smart enough to know this, they are still too dim-witted to make a bee-line towards Tiki-Man’s home. However, any coins or gems that drop into the water are simply forfeit, so the player may want to consider setting up towers such that the killing blows are landed when they are above land.
MONSTERS:
It has been mentioned earlier that the titular monsters that travel towards Tiki-Man’s “flock” are dim-witted. This is, of course, not unlike many of the mooks that are seen in so many other tower defence games. However, those in PixelJunk Monsters perhaps have a special charm to them.
Indeed, they look appropriately dim-witted. The first monster that the player encounters is a small, skittish creature that walks in an awkward manner. The second monster type is a spider that walks like a crab.
There are many more monsters with similar charm. They look hardly menacing, though the player would be harshly reminded that they are not supposed to get too close to the “flock” when they do saunter over.
The hitboxes of monsters vary as much as their looks; the giants, in particular, have huge hitboxes that can make navigating around them very tricky. Furthermore, the same species of monsters may spawn in noticeably different sizes, especially the spiders; their hitboxes and hitpoints are also adjusted accordingly, though they retain the same speed.
None of the monsters appears to be officially named, but the sound clips that the player may get as unlockables (more on these later) would suggest that they do indeed have names during the development of the game. These names also happen to shed light on the nature of some dubiously shaped creatures.
For example, if not for certain sound clips with certain names, the player may not realize that the most numerous and puniest of the monsters are actually anthropomorphic pine cones.
Anyway, each different species of monsters have their own idiosyncrasies. The aforementioned pine cones are some of the weakest and slowest of the monsters, but they are numerous. Spiders are a lot faster than most other monsters, but are more vulnerable to arrows than most other creatures. Then, there are the giants, which are slow but armored creatures that cannot be effectively damaged by Arrow Towers.
Some of the monsters seem to be simple variations of others in terms of gameplay. This is particularly the case for the flying monsters. For example, the bat is practically a flying version of the spider, whereas the anthropomorphic sycamores (note: sycamore is a type of fig fruit) is the hovering version of the pine cone.
However, the developers do realize this. Therefore, they have implemented waves of flying monsters that move over water, which can pose a challenge that is greater than the new player would think. These waves may also provide some entertainment, e.g. such waves have a tendency to fly in circles around trees, begging to be shot down by anti-air assets that replace the very same trees.
Still, killing any dim-witted monsters is fun, especially those that look like they are happily strolling towards Tiki-Man’s home thinking that they would have their next meal.
It is worth noting here that each monster that gets to the abode removes only one “sheep”, and then disappears without a trace and without eating any more. Disbelief aside, this is perhaps for the better.
Bosses do not follow such rules though, as will be described later.
BUFFS:
The regular monsters do not merely resort to numbers and weird movement patterns to leak past the player’s defences. They have other alternative means, though which they pick are always pre-determined.
The first and most common of these is that they become increasingly tougher. This is depicted via longer health meters, which are green by default. Getting even more health turns the meters blue; purple meters appear to give them the most health.
Later, they come equipped with colored shields. There are three types: red, green and blue. To the new player, it is not immediately clear what each type of shield does; the player is expected to learn all of them the hard way. This contributes to the issue that learning about most of the gameplay is a matter of trial-and-error, as will be elaborated later.
In lieu of shields, they may opt to set themselves on fire. Far from hurting themselves, they become immune to the attack of the Fire Tower (which is one of the most devastating towers). They also become a lot faster. Yet, this powerful buff can be removed, specifically via the Ice Tower, which simply turns them back into regular monsters.
The last buff that they can have is also the most hilarious, as well as the trickiest. Land-based monsters attach balloons to themselves in an attempt to get airborne. This actually works, and furthermore, they can steer. They obtain the best of both worlds: immunity to land-based and anti-air attacks.
However, if the player had been placing the ubiquitous Arrow Tower, he/she would discover that the balloons can be popped with arrows. This causes them to fall, and if they so happen to be over water or chasms, they perish immediately (but the player also loses the coins and gems that they may drop).
If they land on solid ground, they are stunned temporarily, at which point they are at the (lack of) mercy of nearby towers. They will then follow their usual movement paths, but no longer have the protection accorded by the balloons.
BOSSES:
As to be expected of bosses, they are very tough; they also happen to be virtually impervious to Arrow Towers. However, they are also generally slow, allowing the player plenty of time to adapt.
Indeed, the player should exploit its slowness, because if the player lets a boss gets to the abode, it kills “sheep” after “sheep” until the player simply loses. Considering that there tends to be few trees around the abode, often there is little that the player can do.
Most bosses simply move over land slowly, but one of them is a ludicrously large insect of sorts that can fly. Anti-air defences are of course needed, but amusingly, it has an unpleasant surprise for the new player.
It has to be noted here that once the boss of a level has been defeated, it drops a clay mask. Tiki-Man can no longer interact with any towers or trees, and can only pick up any gold coins that are still around. Picking up the clay mask completes the level.
MINES & POTION:
Vanilla Tiki-Man ultimately cannot be competitive enough to get through levels with all of his “flock” intact. Fortunately, there are items that the player can unlock that permanently improves his capabilities.
The more straightforward of these two accelerates Tiki-Man as he moves, thus allowing the player to reach different parts of the map more quickly. On the other hand, his inertia would carry him further when the player has him stop, so the player may want to compensate.
The other upgrade is the one that gives the player more leeway in dealing with the waves, which is much appreciated because a lot of the gameplay involves trial-and-error.
Anyway, this upgrade equips Tiki-Man with an organic mine (which resembles a blue cabbage, amusingly enough). Planting the mine consumes five gems, so this is not to be done lightly. Still, having the ability to deploy it at any time when the player can afford it is very convenient. However, the player can only have one mine active at a time.
The mine can be detonated remotely, which is handy. It has a massive blast radius and pretty much kills any regular monster, including buffed and flying ones, outright. Bosses are a different deal though, because maximum damage can only be attained by having the mine exploding exactly underneath them.
TOWERS:
Towers are the main way to eliminate the monsters, obviously.
All of the towers in the game have their own autonomous targeting scripts, so the only influence that the player has over the meting out of their firepower is the placement of these towers. This is limited by the placement of trees though, so the player must be familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of the towers to make optimal placements.
Indeed, each and every one of the towers has its own idiosyncrasies, including even in their upgrade paths (more on upgrades later).
The player starts with the most basic of towers, which are generally available in just about every level. The most commonly used of these are the Arrow and Cannon Towers, which are practically needed for each level anyway because they represent two of the three main archetypes of damage that towers can deal.
The peculiarity with the humble Arrow Tower is that most of its upgrade paths are range increases. At its second-highest upgrade level, it has one of the longest reach that towers could ever have. The highest upgrade allows it to kill weak critters outright, possibly even compensating for the absence of cannon towers if the critters are resorting to force in numbers. Most importantly, the Arrow Tower is one of the most effective towers against fast and soft-fleshed monsters.
Another entertaining nuance about the tower is that arrows that miss their targets can hit some other monster instead, which make the Arrow Tower more effective against convoys of monsters than one would think.
The Cannon Tower is considerably shorter-ranged than most other towers, and perhaps for a good reason (concerning gameplay balance); it fires cannonballs that have considerable splash damage and can damage armored monsters, namely giants. In contrast to the Arrow Tower, its upgrade path is mainly about increasing damage, which means that it is best used for strategies that involve having it fire one shot at convoys that are passing by.
The Anti-Air Tower is practically a machine-gun tower that can only fire on flying enemies. It has a tremendous range by default and considerable rate of fire. Like the other basic towers, it has its own peculiar upgrade path; upgrades mainly increase its rate of fire. Indeed, at the second-highest upgrade level, it fires continuously.
More esoteric towers are not available by default; they must be unlocked by completing special levels. Even so, they have to be made available during actual play by spending gems at the abode (which is a process that conveniently pauses time). Some levels that do not have troublesome creatures do not require their use.
However, where they do appear, the player has no choice but to unlock towers that are practically made to counter them. This is especially the case for the Laser Tower, which is the only tower that can deal with the armored Bees and the only tower that can efficiently remove convoys of flying creatures.
Shielded enemies require the use of certain towers, such as the Fire Tower. Without these, the shielded enemies can shrug off a lot of damage. The player has some advance warning about incoming waves of such creatures, but this warning is not entirely adequate, as will be described later.
Some other esoteric towers are not always a must-have for most levels, but this is mainly because they are rather difficult to use. Some of them are seemingly not even worth the cost.
For example, the Lightning Tower is one of the least useful towers because of its need to be triggered by incoming monsters. This need makes its otherwise-powerful ability to strike all monsters in the screen very difficult to utilize.
Another example is the Hive Tower. On paper, the Hive Tower offers considerable map-wide firepower for just one tower. However, it requires a lot of micro-management to use effectively.
SELLING TOWERS:
Much like other tower defence titles, the player can sell towers for a portion of their original cost.
However, selling towers does not immediately refund the player. The towers turn into showers of coins, which have to be picked up. For an unknown reason, the coins land northwards of the tree that spawned them. This means that towers that are located south of bodies of water cannot be sold and have their costs refunded properly.
This issue has long been in the game since its debut on the PlayStation platform; the developers may even be aware of it. However, if they are, instead of correcting the issue, they have implemented it in one of the challenge levels. This is hardly a solution, but it is at least entertaining.
UPGRADING TOWERS:
As mentioned earlier, towers can be upgraded to make them (ostensibly) more effective. Also, as mentioned already too, each type of tower has its own upgrade path.
There are several types of upgrades, the effects of which are depicted by their graphical labels; there are no text. This can be difficult to figure out initially. For example, the visual label of an explosion may suggest that it increases the damage of a tower that can inflict splash damage, but it actually means that the upgrade increases its area of effect.
The new player cannot immediately see which upgrade is next; neither can the player see the upgrade path of any tower. For the former, the player must approach a tower and toggle the radial menu for selling or upgrading. For the latter, the player must either do research on the towers via guides or wikis, or learn about them through unlocking conceptual design documents for the towers (more on these later).
Indeed, if the player wants to do well in the game, he/she must memorize a lot of things.
Anyway, the towers can be upgraded through no less than four ways. The most common way is to just let them kill monsters. The tower that lands the killing blow obtains the experience, unless there are special scripts that allow other towers to gain experience (such as those for Ice Towers).
The other common way is to have Tiki-Man dance underneath them. Wood-knocking noises may suggest that he is working on them, of course. Cosmetic oddities aside, it will take a while for Tiki-Man to upgrade-dance a tower to the next level, but it is the most reliable upgrade method.
The third method is to build a Gem Tower and let it upgrade other towers. However, this is not a decision to be taken lightly; the Gem Tower is an expensive tower. More importantly, once it has expended its energy to upgrade other towers, it breaks apart and becomes inert, thus wasting a tree that could have been made into another tower. On the other hand, the player gains a single gem from the tower, which may be lucrative.
The higher the level of a tower, the longer its next upgrade would take using the methods above. Managing the player’s time and resources while making decisions on whether to achieve the next upgrade for an important tower or focusing on something else will be an important part of the player’s experience.
The fourth method is the quickest way, but also one that comes with a considerable opportunity cost. The player spends gems to upgrade towers; the cost does not differ among different tower types. The higher the level of a tower is, the more gems the immediate upgrade costs. Moreover, the upgrade will waste any experience that the tower has accrued.
TRIAL-&-ERROR:
Most of the levels in the game are trial-and-error experiences - if the player does not resort to walkthroughs of course.
Many levels have the monsters coming in from different – and sometimes multiple – entrances into the map. Although there are visual indicators for where monsters are coming from, these indicators appear only after they have spawned into the map; it may be too late to improvise already. What paths that they would take are also not evident to the new player.
One could argue that the behaviour of every wave that would come the player’s way is ultimately pre-ordained. Indeed, if a wave of monsters decides that they should circle the same tree three times over before figuring out where they should be going, they would do that every time the player retries the level. Consequently, there is the argument that the waves can be prepared for.
Unfortunately, if there is any preparation to be done, it must be done during previous waves – sometimes even several waves earlier. Most of the towers do not build fast enough to accommodate just-in-time strategies. This also means that the player must restart if he/she learns that the next wave would overcome the player’s defences, if the player wants a perfect run. (Perfect runs are practically needed to advance in the game; there will be more elaboration on this later.)
The game could have been more fun to play if there are means for the player to quickly improvise, such as quick-building of towers by sacrificing more resources. As of now, the only game design that helps this is the quick-upgrading of towers and the laying of mines via the expenditure of gems, but there is no quick-fix techniques that involve the spending of gold.
RAINBOWS & REWARDS:
Although the game does allow the player to scrape through non-challenge levels with just one “sheep” remaining, there are built-in incentives – or more precisely, necessities – that encourage the player to perform well and not let a single “sheep” be turned into a ghost that flies into the air.
Saving all of the “flock” grants the player a “rainbow”. Rainbows are needed in order to progress in any of the three islands in this version of PixelJunk Monsters. The game could have been more pleasant if there is not such a requirement.
There are special levels that grant special rewards upon completion. These rewards usually unlock more esoteric towers for use, and a couple of these levels grant the useful mines and the potion. Therefore, getting to these levels is very much desirable, but they are often barred by obstacles that require the player to obtain rainbows as described above.
LUCK-DEPENDENT LEVELS:
Most of the levels in the game have well-designed challenges, with the exception of one: Eruption Destruction (Tiki Island, Special 3). For every wave in this level, one tower of any type and rank will be randomly chosen for destruction. This can easily ruin an otherwise solid build strategy, e.g. it can destroy towers that the player needs to counter waves.
Succeeding in this particular level with perfect results is nothing but a matter of chance, which contrasts severely with the rest of the game, which generally rewards skill instead of luck.
There is another luck-dependent level in the game, but it is not as bad as Eruption Destruction, fortunately.
One of them, Gold Rush (Gati Gati Island, Special 3), may seem like yet another level where luck is a significant factor in success. The player will not be getting any gold coins from the monsters; any gold that he/she needs must be found by rummaging through the trees. Whether the player could find trees that hide gold in time to build a tower to fend off incoming waves is a matter of chance.
Fortunately, if the player can persevere through the first few waves (which are fortunately quite lax), he/she can reduce the number of trees that may potentially have gold coins by simply replacing trees with towers. Considering that the game can enrich a tree that is already laden with gold and/or gems with even more gold or gems, the player only needs to preserve a few untouched trees at convenient places and harvest them from time to time.
Such a level design allows the player to mitigate factors of luck with wise planning, which can be a satisfying experience to players that are particularly averse to luck-dependent gameplay.
CO-OP MULTIPLAYER:
Although PixelJunk Monsters may have been ported over to the computer platform, there are multiple versions of it for said platform. Unfortunately, the version that facilitates online multiplayer is the one with Steamworks DRM. The Good Old Games (GOG) version, of which this review is based on, lacks such convenience.
(Furthermore, the GOG version is merely named “PixelJunk Monsters” instead of “PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate”, which is the case for the Steam version. This may give the impression that Q-Games is being disingenuous.)
Fortunately, either version has addressed an issue with the original versions for the PlayStation platforms; this issue was that the player’s progress through the single-player campaign and the co-op campaign are separate. In these versions, progress through the islands in single-player and co-op multiplayer is now one and the same. However, scores and rainbows are not shared; these are still earned separately.
For the purpose of local co-op, both players can opt to share the keyboard (which is not ergonomic), or use separate peripherals (the mouse can be used separately, but as mentioned earlier, it is not very good).
Anyway, although there are now two Tiki-Men on-screen, the game does not appear to drastically adjust the difficulty of the incoming monster waves to balance this advantage. If there are any significant differences, they are subtle, e.g. increases in the health of the monsters and just a few more individuals at the end of the convoys.
That is not to say that the players will have it easier though. Any inherent difficulty to be had is dependent on their ability to coordinate their actions.
Both players can spend gems from the same shared pool of gems, meaning that lack of coordination causes waste of precious gems.
Either player has his/her own gold counter, meaning that they cannot resort to having one person collect all the gold coins while the other conveniently builds towers at another part of the screen.
Furthermore, it can be tempting to have one player mostly perform upgrade-dances while the other collects gold and build towers, but such an experience can be terribly boring for the former player.
In other words, as to be expected of co-op multiplayer, the experience is only as good as the synergy between the two players. Perhaps it is for the better that the Good Old Games version only has local co-op, but there is of course no guarantee that people who live/work together under the same roof have such synergy.
TIKI HUT:
The Tiki Hut is the most recent addition to PixelJunk Monsters. The main draw of the Tiki Hut is the medal challenges.
These challenges are actually re-runs of the maps that are seen on the islands. However, the monster waves are often different, usually fine-tuned to fit the challenge. Speaking of challenge, the player is required to achieve a goal in addition to completing the map.
Some of these goals are simple, such as finishing with a perfectly safe flock – in which case the challenge level is really nothing different from the regular one.
The others are more interesting, such as one that requires the player to have only one tower active at a time. This is often a very different experience from that of playing the regular maps that the challenges are based on.
Completing challenges grants the player rewards that appear in the Tiki Hut. Some of these are the usual that the experienced player would expect, such as wallpaper artwork.
Moreover, some of the unlockable content is music and sound effects that can be played separately outside of actual gameplay. This can seem a bit disappointing; Q-Games could have done better by creating independent audio files for the music tracks, at least. Of course, the reality is that the copyright to the tracks belong to Otograph, the Japanese music composer that worked with Q-Games. Thus, the perusal of the music tracks outside of the game proper could have been legally untenable.
The concept “artwork” for the towers is perhaps the best unlockable. Instead of development assets simply being converted into stuff that is crammed into the game as “unlockables”, the conceptual designs actually impart the best strategies to make use of the towers.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
PixelJunk Monsters has plenty of charm in its looks.
The appearance of Tiki-Man and his “flock”, as well as their contrast against the latter’s label as “sheep”, have already been described earlier. This oddity will come up a few times in the game to give the player some amusing reminders.
The basic towers appear to have gates that are just too small for Tiki-Man and his “sheep” to go through. This visual peculiarity may suggest that these towers were meant for some other protagonist.
The other towers do not have such peculiarities. Yet, this further suggests that they may have been assets from other games or that the inspirations for the visual designs of the towers had changed during the development of the game.
The towers appear to have stilted animations, particularly those that work like turrets. At least they have frames for their firing animations though, some of which are impressive, such as the flames that are spewing from the Fire Tower.
The best visual effects to be seen among the towers are those for the sci-fi ones, namely the Coil and Laser Towers. It is worth noting here that in other versions of the game, they have different colours to their visual effects.
Coloured flags denote the levels of towers, simply enough. Interestingly, after a tower has reached its highest level of upgrade, the visual change is not just the colour of its flag; it gains gaudy gold trims too. Perhaps this was intended for user-friendliness, because it makes it easier to know which towers no longer needs upgrades (and which are inadvertently taking away experience points from other towers).
That the titular monsters wear clay masks have been mentioned earlier. The significance of the clay masks is not entirely clear, other than to denote that they are after Tiki-Man’s flock.
Still, despite their common fashion sense, each individual monster type has enough visual designs to give them character. To cite some examples, the pine cones look like they are reluctant and skittish, whereas the giants look carefree as they galumph their way towards the abode, arms swinging back-and-forth.
The environment can look a bit stiff though. The trees are static, as are the bodies of water. Still, this is perhaps for the better because they would have been distracting.
The player will be looking at the bottom of the screen a lot, because the gold, gem and flock counters are there; these are satisfactorily functional.
There is also a meter that shows the number of the wave that the player is currently dealing with, in addition to how long it would be before the next wave comes in (regardless of whether the player has eliminated the previous wave or not). These visual indicators are functional too.
However, the icons that depict the incoming monsters are not so. They do clearly show which type of monster that the player should expect in the incoming wave, but it is not as clear when depicting the buffs that they have.
For example, an icon of a monster that is blinking red would suggest that there would be monsters with red shields. However, not all of the incoming monsters would have the shields.
The icons are also not ideal for showing which monster waves are equipped with balloons. To depict such waves, the game alternates between icons for the monsters and icons for balloons periodically.
Most importantly, the icons do not show the amount of incoming monsters. This is a significant issue of user-friendliness.
Where the game's visual designs falter in user-friendliness, they at least are good at creating pleasant sights, such as the artwork for the islands.
AUDIO DESIGNS:
Most of the audio in the game is provided by Otograph, which has been mentioned earlier.
Otograph’s soundtracks are pleasant to listen to, even when the player is dealing with swathes of monsters that are threatening to leak through. Even players that are jaded towards the tower defence genre may find that they are not too obnoxious to listen to.
A few of the soundtracks may seem playful. For example, the soundtrack that plays when the Yeti boss appears reflects its laid-back personality quite well.
The sound effects for the towers may seem too muted though. They can be difficult to hear over other noises if they are played over speakers, especially the explosions of the cannon towers’ munitions. However, their subtle inflections can be heard through earphones.
The noises that the monsters make are satisfactorily audible, fortunately. Some of them can sound amusing, such as the pine cones’ shrieks when they die, or the strange croaks that the armored bees utter when they are slain.
If one hears closely enough, Tiki-Man’s “flock” whine in fear when monsters come too close. Of course, by then, the player is already too late. It would have been more convenient if this sound is more audible and is played when the monsters are still a considerable distance away for the player to respond.
Considering that Tiki-Man’s sprite is small and his dancing animations are not too visibly overt, that there are clacking noises when Tiki-Man dance-upgrades towers is much appreciated because it indicates that he is upgrading a tower.
CONCLUSION:
PixelJunk Monsters may have a significant number of minor issues (including worthless mouse controls), but these should not be severe enough to prevent this surprisingly charming tower defence title from offering a worthwhile experience. More importantly, PixelJunk Monsters is a great reminder that tower defence titles that utilize actual player characters to provide gameplay can be as sophisticated and nuanced as those that do not – if not more so.