Bonkies Review

What’s better than being an astronaut? How about being a space engineer monkey wearing a space suit equipped with rocket boots and a handy robotic arm to help carry stuff? If that sounds intriguing, I have a puzzle game that will really work your brain. Bonkies is a construction game that encourages you to play locally and supports up to four players. Your mission is to solve puzzles, and if you do, the payment will be in bananas. You will start at the Bonkie Training Station where you learn how to control the robotic arm to help you move the pieces around the stage to solve the puzzle. The goal is to make the pieces you find around the level fit into the white outline. Once the shape is made, the pieces have to be stable and keep that form for at least three seconds to solve the level.

The challenge is figuring out how to position all the blocks to duplicate the shape that is shown. As you place blocks more will come down the conveyor belt for you to move. Some of the blocks are made of glass and you can break them, by mistake or on purpose if you think it would be advantageous to have smaller pieces. To solve the puzzle, you have to complete three separate stages, all on your own, but there is a timer counting down. Hit zero and you will have to start again from the first stage. It is easy to see the advantage of playing co-op with someone else. Moving blocks with two people would be a lot faster than trying to drag it into the right position on your own.

There’s a lot of different factors that come into play when you are constructing your shapes. Not only do you have to deal with gravity but you have to make sure your structure pieces are balanced, if they tip they will make the whole structure topple. So take a couple seconds and make sure your base is able to support all the blocks you are going to stack on top, so it is very important to make sure everything is placed in the correct spot. It’s hard to try to fix it later on once you start adding blocks in the top, so it’s worth checking as you go along that everything is good and didn’t get knocked out of place.

Before you start a new level Bonkies will recommend how many players will be needed to complete the level and show you what kind of supplies you will be using. Some of the puzzles will just have you using the standard blocks. As you progress in the training levels, or the space missions there will be other items like hover panels, girders, glass and blocks that will explode if you hold them too long. These exploding blocks don’t sound too useful, but as long as you place them down before you run out of time you will be okay. You can always move them again right after, so it is better to just put it down than having to deal with the explosion blasting the blocks apart and having to move everything back into its correct spot.

If this doesn’t sound challenging enough, you will be racing against the timer. If you run out of time then you will have to start the level over again at stage one. Even if you have made it to stage three it’s back to the beginning with you. At least if you do have to start over, since you have played that part of the puzzle before you know what pieces have to go where so it usually doesn’t take long to get to the spot you were at before. It takes some trial and error and experimentation to figure out exactly how you have to place the block to find the exact center or sweet spot so it doesn’t tip one way or the other. If the block isn’t totally level once you start building on top it may top and fall down.

There is a lot of thinking needed to solve the puzzles in this game. Though when you are successful in creating your structure, it feels very rewarding. I played a lot of the solo mode for this game and was definitely challenged, though at times very frustrated. Playing Bonkies co-op mode was less frustrating because you have someone else who can help place and keep an eye out for any pieces getting moved causing the structure to become unstable. Plus it’s always nice to have someone help life and move the blocks along with you. Moving the block goes a lot faster, plus if you have a person on each end of the block it won’t swing around as much and can be placed down with minimal movement.

So I highly recommend grabbing a friend and blasting off in your banana rocket to help you on your construction journey as you explore space and the planets. To show everyone how smart the Bonkie engineer construction monkeys really are. You may get frustrated at times, but just remember to breathe and do some experimenting, you may not see the solution at first but trying things out and planning will be very beneficial in your building project.