INTRO:
There was a time when transitions to 3D were a hyped-up trend. After all, there is some excitement that could be squeezed out of the prospect of making use of technology that were cutting-edge at the time. Some of these were great successes, such as Mario 64, which has mostly serviceable 3D gameplay.
Unfortunately, not all transitions were smooth. Switching from 2D to 3D involves a lot more complex coding. Failing to implement that means that the game would be saddled with problems like poor camera controls (if there are any at all), fickle physics and such. Even in the present day, such mishaps still occur.
That said, the PixelJunk Monsters IP debuted at a time when the trend of tower defence games was just about to wane. There can only be so much that can be done with this subgenre of strategy games; few titles could implement innovations to refresh it. PixelJunk Monsters was one of these few; things like dancing to upgrade towers gave the player more things to do than just watching mooks being annihilated by well-placed defences.
This meant that the sequel has a lot to live up to. Unfortunately, the transition of PixelJunk Monsters to 3D is rough.
PREMISE:
In the previous game, there was not much in the way of storytelling. Tiki-Man is the protagonist, and he has to protect infantile relatives of his from the predation of masked creatures that seek to kill them for whatever reason. Through the use of magic that is unique to his tribe, he can defend the little ones by raising autonomous defences that have no qualms about killing the idiotic monsters wholesale.
The sequel does not expand that premise, other than the revelation that the little ones are his siblings and he has a lot of them. Each litter of 20 babies reside in a Tiki-Hut that is in the middle of nowhere, and there is more than one Hut. The origins of the masked creatures are still unclear, other than they seem to have been made by semi-sapient totems that also want to kill the little ones.
There is a game world of sorts that shows the regions that Tiki-Man and his kind live in; there are regions with different climes that do not make any geographical sense.
Of course, the player is not likely playing this game for its storytelling.
HALF-HEARTED PORTING:
The game was originally made for the Playstation platforms, as is often the case for PixelJunk titles. When it made its way to computer platforms like Steam, the porting was not done thoroughly. For one, the in-game documentation still uses the icons for the buttons on console controllers, even though there are controls that make use of the mouse and keyboard.
Speaking of which, the mouse cursor is only ever used in the menu screens. They are not usable in actual gameplay.
AMBIGUITY OF CONTOURS:
One of the major problems with this game is its use of 3D contours. The various stages that the player would be playing have 3D contours, like rolling hills, slopes and such other curvaceous shapes. Unfortunately, the isometric camera angles do a poor job of letting the player observe these contours.
The developers are not aware that the crux of tower defence games is the clarity of the stage that is being played. Competently designed tower defence games operate on the notion of “what you see is what you get”; this game does not. Worst of all, many of the new features that are introduced in this sequel would be stymied by this issue, as will be described later.
JUMPING:
Jumping is a method of movement that has been implemented in the sequel. Despite what the in-game documentation would say about it, it is actually quite impractical and ineffectual.
Firstly, the camera angle does a poor job of indicating the height of Tiki-Man’s jumps. Secondly, the casting of his shadow also makes it difficult to tell where he would land. (More competently designed games that use isometric camera angles shirk the believable casting of shadows in favour of having the shadow appear at where the player character would land.) Thirdly, most stages do not need Tiki-Man to jump about; those that do are among the most frustrating due to the aforementioned problems.
SHELL-CRASH:
In the previous game, there is nothing that Tiki-Man can do to directly harm the incoming monsters. In this game, he can crash onto monsters by getting to a spot that is significantly above the incoming monsters, jump off it and turn his body so that he lands on them shell-first.
This seems cool, but in practice, this is a waste of time. The shell-crash can only be initiated from a fall that is at least twice the height of Tiki-Man’s jump. Yet, as mentioned already, estimating height is difficult.
Furthermore, the shell-crash does not occur automatically; the player must press a button to do so. The prompt only appears when Tiki-Man is still above the requisite height. Since Tiki-Man is falling, there is only a narrow window of time to execute the shell-crash.
Worse, the in-game instruction for this move is incorrect; it mentions only one button, but two buttons are actually needed for the attack. This documentation oversight has not been addressed to this day.
Worst of all, the shell-crash does not do much damage; even against the weakest of the monsters (the walking nuts with masks), they do a pittance. Moreover, Tiki-Man would bounce off the monsters somewhere close by, and would be at risk of coming into contact with them.
COMING INTO CONTACT WITH MONSTERS:
Coming into contact with monsters causes Tiki-Man to be flipped onto his back; he takes a few seconds to flip back onto his feet, during which coins pop out of him. The number of coins is proportional to the amount of gold that the player already has.
Considering that the player is better off having Tiki-Man under his/her control than not, the player will not want him to come into contact with enemies too much.
COINS & GEMS:
Like in the previous game, the Tiki-Man needs to collect money in order to pay (someone or something) for the conversion of trees into defensive towers. Coins still pop out of defeated monsters, as well as a few trees in the stage. Towers that have been dismantled also release coins.
In the previous game, the coins bounce all over the place and can be obscured by trees, making them frustrating to collect. Unfortunately, the sequel makes this worse. Due to 3D contours and physics, coins can hop all over the place, more so than in the previous game.
Considering that the higher difficulties of stages can require every bit of coin that the player can get in the early waves, the fickleness of the bouncing coins can make these experiences particularly appalling.
Likewise, gems are subjected to the same physics as coins. Thus, they are just as frustrating to collect, if not even more so because gems are more precious.
FRUITS:
Fruits are introduced in the sequel. They could have been good additions to the gameplay, if not for the fact that the fruits are subjected to the aforementioned issues.
Fruits are items that Tiki-Man must carry around in order to be deployed at where they would be useful. Generally, their effects are only triggered when the masked monsters come into contact with the fruits, i.e. the fruits have to be placed in their path.
Fruits can be obtained in one of two ways. The first method is to rustle trees, which might release them (in this case, this is more believable than golden coins popping out of trees). However, like trees that have coins or gems, the player has no way of knowing which tree has fruits until they are rustled.
The second method is to purchase them from the vendor behind the tribal totem. This vendor always has a totem near any Tiki-Hut. Locating the hut for the first time can be a bit difficult, mainly due to the camera angle not giving the player a good look at the most distinctive features of the totem. That said, the vendor only accepts gems in return for the fruits, so the player will have to decide on how to best expend the gems that have been collected.
As for the effects of the fruits, some of them are wholly intended for multiplayer. One of the fruits, in particular, practically hijacks the camera of other players, showing them where the player who deployed the fruit wants the others to look at. Some other fruits have more immediate effect on the incoming monsters, such as a bomb fruit.
Some of the fruits are intended to be used on Tiki-Man instead of the monsters. To use these fruits, the player has to have Tiki-Man jump on them. Fortunately, the collision boxes are generously large for this occasion.
Unfortunately, the effects are not potent enough to justify the costs of purchasing them. The gems could have been better spent on the towers instead. Moreover, deploying fruits can be a tad tedious, because Tiki-Man moves a bit slower when carrying a fruit. Furthermore, any disruption causes him to drop the fruits.
As for the inertia of the fruits, they are heavier than coins, so they bounce a lot less. Still, they could do unpleasant things like skipping down a slope, if the player placed them without knowing that there is an incline there.
TOWERS - OVERVIEW:
Fortunately, the transition to 3D has not affected the towers by much. The developers had the good sense to retain most of what which worked in the previous game, though this also means that most of the towers are little more than rehashes.
TOWER ROTATION:
In the previous game, the towers revert to a default sprite when they are not attacking anything. When they are attacking monsters, their sprite immediately changes to an orientation that has them aiming in the general direction of the monsters.
In the sequel, the towers act like turrets in 3D. They must rotate so that they can aim their business ends at the monsters. Therefore, there is a notable delay between monsters entering their range and them attacking the monsters. Fortunately, most towers have turrets that rotate quickly.
CONVERTING TREES:
Trees can be converted into towers, but a tower needs space; trees that are too close to each other will be lost when one of the trees is converted. When the player is deciding which tower to convert a tree into, the player is shown the trees that would disappear as a consequence of that; the trees have their outlines highlighted for this purpose. This is one of the better designs in the sequel.
FAULTY TOWER RANGE DISPLAY:
Unfortunately, there is a problem in how the game displays the range of the towers. In theory, when the range of a tower is displayed, it is shown as an almost opaque yellow ring that originates from the tower and is drawn along the ground.
In practice, the display of this ring is glitch-ridden. The 3D contours of terrain around the tower, especially if it is on a slope, causes the ring to be wrongly drawn. Furthermore, the game mentions that height vantage will increase the range of a tower, but the ring does not display this increased range correctly. (Fortunately, the range bonus is applied.)
UPGRADING TOWERS:
Like in the previous game, towers can be upgraded by having Tiki-Man dance under them. He can still clip through the towers, so doing this is convenient.
Towers also upgrade automatically by killing monsters. However, this only applies to towers that are able to inflict harm; the Freeze Tower does not inflict any damage when it applies its cooling de-buff, so it cannot gain upgrade points this way.
However, this method of upgrading also means that towers that are already at their maximum level would be inflicting most of the kills, thus depriving the other towers of much-needed upgrade points.
TOWER ANIMATIONS:
Most of the towers’ animations have been designed not just for aesthetics but also for visual aid; this is one of the better design policies in the sequel. For example, when Tesla Towers are ready to discharge their electricity, their metal spheres are suspended above their receptacles; when they are not, the spheres are resting in the receptacles. However, there are no visual indicators for the progress that a tower is making towards readying its next attack.
ARROW TOWERS:
The arrow tower remains a low damage output tower, but one with significantly upgradeable range. It remains one of few types of towers that are capable of popping the balloons that are used by some otherwise ground-based monsters. In the sequel, arrow towers also happen to be the ones that are raised the quickest, so the player could try to raise one in a pinch (though usually, it would be too late to rectify the situation).
Like their predecessors, arrow towers improve their range when they are upgraded. This will not help much in the later waves, when monsters are more numerous and tougher. However, in some of the higher difficulty ratings, getting an upgraded Arrow Tower in the right location as soon as possible is crucial.
CANNON TOWERS:
Cannon towers still have short ranges, but their cannonballs appear to be much faster at landing in the sequel. Thus, cannon towers are still the most cost-effective means of knocking out gaggles of monsters. (Of course, there are other ground-only towers that are more effective in specific situations.)
ANTI-AIR TOWERS:
The third of the three basic towers is intended to be used against flying/floating enemies. Their design in this game is one of the few good designs that the developers have implemented.
Anti-air towers have considerable range from the outset. When they are upgraded, their salvoes are more frequent, last longer and inflict more damage. Indeed, if there are enough trees and space, a cluster of anti-air towers can wreck most aerial enemies.
Conveniently, anti-air towers have scripts that have them retain their remaining shots in their magazines if they killed a monster partway through a salvo. The rest of the shots are expended on the next target, though the tower takes close to a second to switch targets.
HIVE TOWER:
The Hive Tower is a mostly good addition to the gameplay. This powerful tower is available to the player right from the start, but learning how it works is not easy because it does not cleave to the usual designs of towers in tower defence games.
It has no actual range because it does not damage enemies directly. Rather, it spawns swarms of bees. Half of these will circle around the hive, whereas the other half follows Tiki-Man around; they are friendly to him.
The bee swarms will eventually disperse though, so there is only a limited number of swarms at any time. The tower also stops spawning bees when a certain number of swarms have been reached. Upgrading the tower makes it spawn bees more frequently and increases the number of swarms that can be around.
The swarms have slightly erratic flight patterns, even if they have an apparent path and destination. These patterns happen to be quite necessary, because this is how they can come into close proximity with monsters. A swarm that is close to a monster will attack it; the player is notified of this via a distinctive screech that occurs before the swarm converges on its target.
The bees die immediately after coming into contact with their target (which is perhaps to be expected; real bees do not survive stinging a target). However, considerable damage is inflicted, and the bees are effective against anything, including even armoured enemies and balloons. Upgrading the tower also increases the damage of the bees.
Although the tower itself does not directly damage enemies, any kills that the bee clusters inflict will grant progress towards the tower’s upgrading.
Little of the above is told to the player; the in-game documentation is sparse on how the hive tower actually works. However, a player that has learned the above can use the Hive Tower to devastating effect. Indeed, a Hive Tower on its own, placed in a tight round-about, can wreck entire waves of monsters. This is just as well, because the player can only have one Hive Tower at any time.
An observant player would eventually notice that the Hive Tower is needed for just about every perfect run. No other tower could come close to the effectiveness and reliability of a well-placed Hive Tower.
TESLA TOWER:
The Tesla Tower has very short range, but can zap all enemies within reach, i.e. it works much like its predecessor. Like its predecessor, it is best placed in roundabouts or circular turns.
LASER TOWERS:
The Laser Towers return. Unfortunately, the 3D environs have made it less effective; its laser pulses only travel in straight lines, but aerial monsters may follow paths that the laser can only intersect at a few locations.
However, perhaps in a rare moment of good observation, the developers realize this and have improved its designs to compensate for this. The main improvement is that the laser tower gains faster recharging with each upgrade, thus allowing it to annihilate flights of aerial monsters that do not have straight paths.
FREEEZE TOWERS:
Freeze Towers are perhaps the least of the returning towers. Considering that some of the others have been given designs that compensate for their shortfalls, Freeze Towers lack any.
Freeze Towers do not inflict any damage, and they can at best only affect one or two monsters at a time. Their worst design is that they do not prioritize the targeting of monsters that have been hastened; Freeze Towers are supposed to be the hard counters for these but they lack this crucial design.
FIRE TOWER:
The Fire Tower is also a returning tower. It still burns only a single spot while it empties its current fuel tank, so it should be placed such that it is targeting narrow paths that the waves have to take. That said, it can inflict considerable damage to just about anything except blue-tinted monsters (which are shielded against fire and explosive ordnance). Two of them at a strategic chokepoint can annihilate entire waves of ground-based enemies on their own.
Curiously, Tiki-Man is not affected by the fire at all. Thus, it is possible for Tiki-Man to linger around the fire to collect stuff that the monsters drop.
MORTAR TOWER:
The Mortar Tower returns from the previous game too. Like its predecessor, the Mortar Tower is like the Cannon Tower with longer range and bigger ordnance. However, its firing rate is lesser.
LIGHTNING TOWER:
Likewise, the Lightning Tower returns from the previous game. It works much like it did in the previous game. The only difference – which is not a good one – is that it is much taller than before, meaning that it can visually obscure more things. Considering the isometric camera angle, this can be a problem.
STUFF IN TREES:
One of the iconic gameplay designs of PixelJunk Monsters as a title in an otherwise overcrowded genre is that the trees have goodies in them. To reveal them, the player has to move Tiki-Man into them to have them rustled. This design is retained in the sequel.
Unfortunately, being iconic does not mean that it is fun. As mentioned earlier, gems, coins and fruits that have been released by trees will bounce around after popping out of the trees in random directions. In the case of this game’s 3D graphics and physics, this has been made worse; the other trees can obscure the goodies and the contours make them much more problematic to collect.
WATER & TIKI-MAN:
In the previous game, water is off limits to Tiki-Man, for whatever reason. In the sequel, Tiki-Man can fall into water if the player wills him to do so, but it soon becomes obvious that he does not like the water.
After a second or so of wasting time struggling in the water, a few small-value coins pop out of him; it is unlikely that the player could retrieve these, unless they somehow bounce off the ground at the water’s edge and onto him. A few moments after that, he somehow launches himself out of the water in a random direction onto a nearby piece of land. The player does not appear to have any control over this.
In the previous game, coins and gems that fall into water are immediately lost. In the sequel, they do not disappear outright; rather, they blink several times before disappearing. This would be the player’s cue to get to them.
Unfortunately, due to Tiki-Man’s aforementioned aversion to water, this is not likely to be successful. The most that the player could do is to grab any gem that has fallen into the water, but doing so might cause the player to forfeit some gold.
These are very conflicting designs, which in turn suggest poor and/or lackadaisical playtesting on the part of the developers.
WATER & MONSTERS:
The water is hazardous to most monsters; only the boss monsters can traipse through water without drowning. That said, this fact can only be used against ground-based monsters that are using balloons; if they fall into water after their balloons have been removed, they drown outright. Unfortunately, this also forfeits any loot that can be had from them.
LAVA POOLS:
Most maps do not have much of anything to offer other than the distribution of trees, the tracts of land separated by water or lava and the paths that the monsters would take. However, in a very rare moment of innovative design, the maps that occur in the volcanic regions have pools of lava that the player can exploit.
Amusingly, the player does this by having Tiki-Man walk over them. This sets him on fire, but he is otherwise impervious (which may also happen why he can pass through the flames of the Fire Tower without any issue). Still, being on fire agitates him, which in turn somehow makes him move faster.
MAP DESIGNS:
There are several very large maps in the game. Peculiarly, each of them is used three times, with the camera constrained to certain portions of the map; the default camera orientation (and the orientation of the Tiki Hut) is also different for each of the three times. The trees are mostly retained, but there are some subtle differences between the permutations.
The portions that are not used are blocked off via barricades that have been adorned with the masks of slain monsters. Oddly enough, the monsters, including the bosses, do not pass through paths that have been barricaded.
MONSTERS – OVERVIEW:
For better or worse, the gameplay designs of the monsters have been mostly recycled from the previous game. There are very few differences here.
ROUTES OF MONSTERS:
One of the few differences that the sequel has compared to its predecessor is that the player is shown the main path that the monsters would take. However, not all monster waves would take the same path; the player would know this when someone monologues about the next wave not taking the same route.
Ultimately, the player would have to observe the path of each wave in order to learn about them and use that knowledge when retrying the stage. Generally though, the player is best raising towers close to the Tiki-Hut for most stages, with the exception of a few where the waves are too much for such a strategy.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS:
Other than 3D models and endearing animations, the monsters are still much like their 2D predecessors. To cite some examples, there are the walking coconuts with masks, which are practically cannon fodder (they so happen to be vulnerable to cannons). There are the fast spiders, which necessitate the use of arrow towers if they occur early on.
Even the bosses have been mostly recycled from the previous game. The statue with big feet and too many eyes return, as do the lanky colossus that tends to spawn stone giants.
VULNERABILITIES:
Each type of monster has a specific vulnerability; this generally has been retained from the previous game. For example, the regular stone giants are still vulnerable to cannons and mortars.
Vulnerabilities are at least something that the sequel does somewhat right. When a monster is hit with something that it is vulnerable to, it hops up into the air with a visible exclamation of “Ow!” over its model. It would not take long for an observant player to associate a monster type to the tower that it is vulnerable to.
DIFFICULTY LEVELS & UNLOCKING STAGES:
Every stage has three difficulty settings: “Fun”, “Tricky” and “Mayhem”. For better or worse, these are some of the means that the developers use to stretch out the gameplay experience.
Only “Fun” is available at first, and only for the stages that have been unlocked. Unlocking more stages within the same region requires the player to play the previously unlocked stages and complete them at the “Fun” setting. Doing so also unlocks the “Tricky” setting for the stage that has been completed.
In order to get the “Mayhem” setting available for all stages, the player must complete all stages in the base game at the “Fun” setting. Even so, the player has to complete the stages in “Tricky” before being able to play the “Mayhem” variants.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN DIFFICULTY SETTINGS:
The main differences between the difficulty settings are the density and numerousness of the waves. Higher difficulties toss waves with more individual monsters, as well as additional waves that are not in the lower settings. For example, in one stage, there may be two consecutive waves of cannon fodder monsters in lower settings, but in higher settings, there is a wave of fast spiders between them.
Thus, the new player would have to learn through first-hand observation about the sequence of the waves, along with their composition and routes. The only certainty that the player has is that the terrain is the same for every difficulty setting.
RAINBOWS AND UNLOCKING REGIONS:
Finishing a stage at a specific difficulty setting without any of the little ones being killed grants the “Rainbow Fragment” for that scenario. Rainbow Fragments are implemented in the game as progress gates; the other regions with their own stages can only be played after the player has obtained the necessary number of Fragments to unlock them.
ANCIENT TOKENS & COSTUME PIECES:
Completing stages at specific difficulty settings for the first time gives Ancient Tokens to the player; in the case of multiplayer, the other players gain Ancient Tokens too. Ancient Tokens are intended to be spent on the purchasing of alternative masks and shells from the costume vendor.
Considering the number of costume pieces and the amount of the tokens that are needed to purchase them, there is the impression that this part of the game may have been designed with the intention of implementing microtransactions for cosmetic content. If so, it is fortunate that the game did not go on this route.
MULTIPLAYER:
In the case of the Steam version of the game, there is the option of inviting a person on one’s list of Steam Friends, so there is more than just local multiplayer. This was a relatively late addition to the designs of the game. Prior to its addition, the other players can only be the player’s real-life friends, i.e. the multiplayer was local-only.
The other players can do what the host player can do. In particular, having at least one player going around rustling trees would be helpful. However, they share the same gold and gem counters, so the players might want to agree on what to spend resources on.
Only the host player gains all of the rewards of having completed stages, e.g. unlocking other stages and getting the Rainbow Fragments. The other players only gain Ancient Tokens.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
The transition to 3D did not mess with the cartoonish visual appeal of PixelJunk Monsters. Indeed, if there is anything that is positively good about this transition, it is that the Tikis and the monsters are much more expressive than they are in the previous game.
As for the models, they have an uncanny resemblance to clay models. The stone plinths and the Rainbow Fragments are particularly so. This is not to their detriment, because this at least makes the models not so terrible to look at when beheld up close.
The environments of the stages are less appealing though. The trees do not make any motion until they are rustled. The hills in all regions look similar to each other, with the differences being the texture packs that are used for them.
SOUND DESIGNS:
The sounds in the sequel are perhaps the first sign that the sequel is different from the previous one. In particular, the composer of the music is not the one that composed the music in the previous game. This might displease those who fondly remembered the previous game for its music.
That said, the music in the sequel is still serviceable, albeit perhaps a tad underwhelming. For example, when the bosses come over, the track that is played in such occasions consists of little more than melancholic plucks of guitar string.
The towers at least have retained their distinct sound effects. It is easy to know which tower is firing when they do – this convenience is all the more important because the camera view will not be able to take in the entire stage. In the case of some towers, such as the Tesla and Mortar Towers, there are also have sound effects for when they have prepped their attacks.
Of course, with no means of having the towers withhold their attacks – much less control them in any way – the sound effects would not help the player much.
SUMMARY:
The sequel retained the good designs of the towers and the monsters from the previous game. However, the transition to 3D physics worsened problems that were in the previous game, especially the collection of coins and gems. It also introduced new ones, like failing to cleave to the design policy of “what you see is what you get” in tower defence games.
Granted, with enough experience and perseverance, the player could eventually learn how to work around these shortfalls in design. Yet, this also means not doing most of the things that have been implemented in the sequel.
Consequently, the sequel would be a disappointment to those who remember the previous game. To those who have not, there are really much better tower defence games with 3D graphics out there.