Monster Island is very much a followup to the excellent Fragger. Like its predecessor, it involves lobbing explosives at enemies, but expands on the gameplay by introducing different types of grenades - called "minis" in this game. It stacks up surprisingly well. Like Fragger, the Flash version[a] is available at Miniclip.com.
Where Fragger had a near-apocalyptic world full of blown-out buildings, Monster Island has a surreal, cartoonish art style with a living landscape painted in bright, saturated colors. The "minis" that you throw start off with a simple "blui" grenade that works just like the grenades in Fragger. After a short while they are complemented by balls of slime that you can use to stick grenades to surfaces and glue together items. This results in puzzles no longer being about just throwing grenades, but about how these minis are combined.
The difficulty level is lower than Fragger, partly due to the user interface, but also thanks to how the levels are designed. In the user interface, for example, there is an option to throw when clicking on the mini type, instead of throwing when you release the finger from the screen, and just that single changes makes it a lot easier. No more throws by mistake because your finger went outside the touch-sensitive parts of the screen. The level design seems to have done away with much of the time-sensitive throws of Fragger, as well as the levels where one had to put the grenade through a miniscule target window.
What's the end verdict, then? A worthy successor and a good game in its own right. Like Fragger it is easy to pick up and difficult to put down.
Links
http://www.miniclip.com/games/monster-island/en/ |