Originally released on the PlayStation Network, PixelJunk Monsters now makes it’s way on to PC with the Ultimate edition. Tikiman the Forest Defender needs your help in protecting his land from monsters threatening to take his children. It is up to you to use the towers at your disposal to fight off the hordes of enemies and keep the peace.
The Ultimate edition has 4 Islands, 3 difficulties and a whole slew of challenges for you to spend your time on. Each island also has 3 sections of levels – easy, medium and hard. To unlock the later stages you need to perfect a certain amount of levels to get the rainbows to be able to proceed. Three of the islands have set challenges and levels, but Tum Tum Island is different. On Tum Tum Island you have the option to input a seed which will then generate for you a random level, so there are many options for you once you have completed the game, or if you feel like it, before then as the island is available early on.
PixelJunk Monsters offers quite a bit of replayability from the islands already, and to top that off there are 24 challenges in the Tiki Hut that will test your skills. The Tiki Hut will gradually unlock different challenges as you play through the game and will allow you to unlock items after completion.
Since Monsters was originally on PSN, the game itself is optimised for controller usage with the menus and hints focusing on a controller being used. Keyboard controls aren’t impossible (thankfully) and you can get used to them quick enough once you set your keybinds to how you like them. It sometimes can feel like Tikiman’s movement isn’t too responsive, but overall, the start up to his movement and movement in general is kind of slow. There are items you can get in game that affect this later on, so it’s not all too bad.
At the start of the game there are only 6 available towers for you to use. 3 are immediately available in a map but the other 3 are accessed by buying them in the level with Gems. They do not stay unlocked throughout the game however and you must purchase them on each level that you would want to use them in. Other towers are unlocked in the Tiki Hut and by playing through the game.
The trees on the maps are how you build up your defences. Tikiman will replace a tree with the tower of choice which is bought with gold and upgraded with gems or dancing (which is by far my favourite way to upgrade towers, albeit a tad slow). Gems will drop randomly from mobs that are killed, but remember to conserve your gems as they are used for a few things.
Firstly as mentioned before, to upgrade towers. These are by far the fastest way to upgrade a tower, as dancing takes a while to fill up the exp bar. Towers also gain experience from monster kills, so well placed towers will level up faster. There are 5 levels that your tower can attain, each level more expensive than the last to upgrade. Secondly, gems are used for tower unlock purchases in the levels. Last but not least they are also used to place bombs. Once you unlock the bombs they are placed by Tikiman in the middle of a lane and they one-shot mobs. They are pretty expensive at 5 gems a piece though. Being able to walk around to place the towers but not attack feels a bit a bit odd since sometimes you are just standing there not doing much.
One of the aspects that I appreciated in the game was the resource management. Since the towers are not upgraded by the gold that is constantly flowing in, but by the rarer gems, you have to keep an eye on how you want to play. I prefer this to being able to smash the upgrade button constantly. You have to keep an eye out for whether it’s more beneficial for you to purchase a new tower to kill certain mobs, or place a bomb in case something manages to get through your defences.
Some of the maps are quite hard to anticipate where to put your towers, as there is no indication of where mobs are going to be coming from, and some mobs have odd pathing. In earlier maps the pathing is pretty easy to sumise, but once you get to some of the later levels it’s a bit of a pain to figure out. I have started a level over many times after being surprised at where some mobs are coming from and therefore not having optimal tower placement and upgrades in time. The speed of the mobs can be a bit boring as there is no way to speed up the arrival of monsters like most Tower Defence games, so I found myself sitting around a lot waiting for the monsters to hurry up and die so we could move on to the next wave.
On top of the “story” mode and Tiki Hut, you can also play Local co-op and online co-op with friends. Two things that bugged me about co-op mode wasn’t the mode itself but the menus. I was using a controller for the most part and for some reason it stops responding on part of the menu, so I had to switch to keyboard. Not a massive hassle but it would have been nice to not have to make the switch. The other thing that was annoying was every time you finish a level with your online co-op partner, you have to send them another request to do the next level instead of the game just continuing until someone wants to stop.
Co-op mode itself is pretty fun. Each of you have a separate coin pool so you don’t share the funds, this can make it awkward if you’re not communicating with your partner and they pick up coins that you need. The gem pool however is shared; there was no obvious difficulty difference but co-op does make upgrading towers quicker, as you can either upgrade two at once or both dance on the same tower. Your Tikimen are either blue or red detailed, however if there is a lot going on it makes it hard to differentiate between the two if you’re in a rush to get somewhere.
The art style in PixelJunk Monsters is very simple, yet colourful and easy on the eyes. It’s a very cheery world to be slaughtering hordes of monsters. I felt like it was a nice change from the other dreary and boring looking Tower Defence games out there. Accompanying the simple art is similarly bland music. There are no epic ballads of adventure supporting the game, instead an upbeat little tune in the background. It’s nice for a little while, though it can get really repetitive if you’re on a level for a while since there’s not much variation. Once a boss arrives the music makes a welcome change that is appropriate (for the tone of the game) for smacking them in the face with an army of towers.
I didn’t enjoy the game so much when I first picked it up as I thought it was a tad slow paced, but as the game progressed and I got over to the other islands I found myself enjoying this little tower defence package. I spent way too much time restarting levels because I like perfecting it before progressing on, which doesn’t always work too well in this game. Sometimes it’s better to gain new towers and items, and then revisit a level than perfecting it straight away.
While not the most amazing game in the world, it is a nice time waster. I’d use it as a break between playing more in depth games just for a change of scenery. It’s pretty enjoyable if you can get over the pacing, and it’s pretty darn cute.
The game is currently on the Steam marketplace for $19.99/€18.99/£14.99.