There’s no monkey business quite like BOMBANANA! Who thought that putting three monkeys — one deaf, one blind, and one mute — in charge of stopping a workshop from exploding was a good idea?
Working in a group, you’ll need to defuse a ticking bomb by tackling a bunch of brain-bending communication puzzles. But seeing, hearing, and saying the right thing is never quite as simple as it should be; get your signals crossed, and things can go bananas very quickly.
Monkey Business
Players can choose to play as a deaf, blind, or mute monkey… Or leave their fate to a dice roll. Each primate has their own unique role to play.
The blind monkey is colour blind and handles most of the dangerous bomb tinkering, while the mute monkey is responsible for deciphering the instruction manual. Which leaves the poor deaf monkey to interpret the muted instructions and somehow relay them to the blind monkey before everything goes boom!
Apes Together Strong
It took a bit of experimenting, but we eventually found our groove and began working our way through the levels. But BOMBANANA! doesn’t rest on its laurels, the difficulty scales up nicely.
When you feel like you’ve got something downright, it throws a new spanner in the works, keeping you on your toes. Lights go out, or the radio comes on and you have to throw things at them to stop them malfunctioning. Not only does it break your concentration and disrupt your problem solving, but also eats into your precious bomb disarming time!
Tick, Tock, BOOM
Each level is slightly different and combines all sorts of puzzles together. One minute we were cutting wires, the next we were playing piano, doing maths (hopefully you know your odd and even numbers), or trying to toggle switches on and off while the bomb was threatening to blow any second. The puzzles were fun at first, but after many hours in a row they started to drive us bananas, especially on Endless mode.
The time limits are reasonable and you’re able to make a few mistakes before you fail a level and everything goes boom. However, communicating the intricate details of puzzles did prove difficult at first, so going back to the lobby and discuss strategies was a must.
Full Blown Chaos
The cartoonish graphics of BOMBANANA! aren’t anything fancy but are still functional. At its core it’s a great communication and teamwork game that scratches the primal itch to smack and throw things at your friends. In-game voice chat worked well and the gameplay itself was smooth with minimal bugs, despite crashing often when quitting the game. Overall, we clocked the full game in about six hours.
Although we had a blast solving the puzzles, we didn’t feel the urge to go back and replay them, as they did get quite tedious. While we were thankful that the difficulty lowered after several failed attempts, it would’ve been great to have the option to opt into it.
It’s a great casual party game with friends, with short levels that quickly descend into absolute chaos, but it can be a sensory overload at the best of times. For those who are sensitive to beeps, bangs, lights flickering, etc. the game is probably best enjoyed in short bursts.
BOMBANANA! is out now on PC for $11.50 AUD.
Quest Daily scores BOMBANANA!:
7.5/10
Codes for BOMBANANA! were supplied to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review.
