Indies for the Weekend

Monster Island

So it's just one entry for this weekend since I figured this title would be a bit longer than it was. Monster Island is an arena shooter where waves of enemies spawn in, you dispose of them and another wave of more enemies spawn in. This is usually how these sorts of titles work. The game is called Monster Island because it supposedly takes place on an island. I would just say that it takes place on a landmass floating in the sky.

For monster disposal purposes you get an arsenal of weapons. Where you have the regulars such as an assault rifle, a rocket launcher, and a couple of energy weapons. To me, it seemed that all weapons made the same amount of damage to enemies which was pretty strange and made me question the purpose of having all of them if they just deal the same amount of damage. The only weapon that I felt made any kind of difference was what I guess would be the real rocket launcher. What I mean by this is that there seem to be two of them here. One that makes such a noise and has such an animation that you think is a rocker launcher but isn't because of the low damage output. Then there is the one that I think is the real rocket launcher that doesn't look like a rocket launcher but has an animation where it fires three fire shots and disposes of enemies after 1-3 shots. All the weapons have infinite ammo and you can use them all straight away.

Visually it's pretty interesting, to say the least. Apart from it being very pink one would believe that the character you are playing is drunk because it's all very hazy as well. The use of colors though is pretty smart here because even though there is a lot of pinks it's blended well with dark colors and with the help of shadowing it all makes the setting look very ominous. Together with the haziness and the colors that show up when enemies explode and you shoot your guns, it can get a bit too much at times as it can be hard to see what's going on.

This is without a doubt someone's first game and considering that it's a pretty good effort. It also doesn't overstay its welcome to the point of getting repetitive instead, it wraps about at just about the right time. Gameplaywise, it's nothing to write home about, but it's at least worth checking out for its interesting visual style and it's also free