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Tiki Towers
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Graphics & Sound:
Graphically, Tiki Towers is one of the more impressive games that I have played on the iPhone. The animations are smooth and the cartoonish monkeys are very fun to watch. Seeing that little monkey face light up when it grabs a banana and scampers to safety warms the heart (well, almost anyway). From the opening cinematic, the game is light-hearted, yet well rendered. The artwork is superb and creates the ideal setting for the action. As levels progress, some of the levels become more interactive, and all of the movable objects react well in the touch-sensitive environment.
Still, graphics alone a great game will not make. Thankfully, great care has been taken in assuring that the sound portion of the game is at least on par with the graphics. The background music is clever and in keeping with the setting, that is to say, a comically tribal combination. The monkeys make, well, monkey sounds as the jump, swing and climb across the various obstacles. Bamboo creaks and snaps as towers collapse or when overly stressed by the monkey antics. For a game that takes up very little space (15Mb listed), the quality of graphics and sound quality is pretty astounding. |
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Gameplay:
Gameplay in Tiki Towers is relatively straightforward. In each of the 45 levels, there awaits a box of five monkeys. The goal is to build, using bamboo, coconuts and vines, towers, bridges and ramps to help the monkeys reach the exit. Sometimes this will entail scaling high cliffs, while other times they will need a way down from these heights. Build bridges across bottomless chasms and bubbling pools of lava, construct swinging contraptions and take advantage of swiveling anchor points to plan out how a tower will fall when the monkeys ascend.
Conceptually, this is a relatively simple puzzle game that, in various forms, has been done time and again. This iteration, like others before, is extremely addictive and will keep players trying again and again to figure out how to get those dear little simians to safety. If the player can manage to build the towers in such a way that will allow the monkeys to not only reach safety, but also collect all of the bananas along the way, they will be awarded a gold mask. These masks are needed to unlock the more advanced islands. However, this task is much easier said than done and many a monkey tumbled to his demise or reached the goal banana-less during my time adventuring through the islands. |
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Difficulty:
While simple in concept, completing Tiki Towers can prove a bit complicated. First and foremost, the player needs to meet the simple requirements of getting the monkeys to safety. A lot of time will be spent in later levels on trial and error, and sometimes I'll admit, it is better to be lucky than good. The physics engine is very good and players must be ever vigilant when constructing their tower, bridge, etc., keeping in mind how it will move once the monkeys are released. Monkeys jumping and swinging will stress and break the bamboo. Their weight will also cause towers to sway and bridges to buckle. All of this must be accounted for in the initial construction.
Yet, part of the fun of the game is figuring out how to best construct your mechanisms. A not-so-fun part of the game is actually constructing them. Some of the levels require some fairly precise layout in order to avoid catastrophic collapses. Attaining this level of precision can prove very difficult on a small touch screen, especially if you have larger fingers that make seeing what you are doing all the more challenging. Scrolling the screen without actually placing bamboo also can be a bit frustrating. Thankfully, the game easily allows the player to make corrections and restart the action, either by clearing all the bamboo and starting over, or just putting the monkeys back in the box long enough to make a few key changes. This feature was indeed a saving grace for me on many occasions. |
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Game Mechanics:
As previously mentioned, the heart of this game comes in the placement of your bamboo construction materials. After the first nine introductory-like levels, the goals become much more complicated and players will need to think a bit outside of the box to achieve a gold mask. To this end, there are several tricks that I found tremendously useful.
The first is learning to predict how towers will react when you start the action. If they are leaning ever so slightly during the build phase, they might just sway slightly to adjust when the action starts, or they may topple over completely. One method I found useful when dealing with a large height discrepancy was to purposely lean the tower towards the wall or building a supporting beam to help stabilize the structure. Being able to predict the monkey's path also comes in to play, as some areas of the structure may need more support than others. Remember, not only are they trying to get to the goal, they are also trying desparately to reach those delicious bananas.
Speaking of bananas, another key element that is not introduced immediately in the game is the fact that bananas will "stick" to the towers. That is to say, if you build a structure and part of it touches a banana, if the structure moves or collapses, that banana will go with it. This is very useful when the player is trying to manipulate the path of the monkeys or makes sure that they can reach all of the bananas. A method that I used frequently is something I call "out on a limb." When building structures, you will need a minimum of two bamboo sticks to create a section (a single stick can be placed as support between two already existing coconuts, if it will reach). Sometimes you want to build a section to attach a banana to the structure, but you do not have two sticks to spare. One way to accomplish this is to build the extension using two sticks, then remove one of the sticks for use elsewhere, leaving the one limb sticking out attached to the banana. It will swing like a swivel when the action phase begins, with banana in tow. This trick also comes in handy when you want to use a single stick as a support beam or to add a little extra weight on one side of a structure.
All in all, this is a very fun and entertaining game and, at a price of 99 cents at the time of this review, a simply unbeatable deal from the iTunes App Store. |
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-The Mung Bard, GameVortex Communications AKA Buddy Ethridge |
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