Originally Posted July 2nd 2014 on the Seafoam Gaming Forums

Not many developers make multiplayer only games anymore. Not only are they super risky to release in a market that demands good single player experiences, but they also may not do well if the price isn’t right. Is Monkey Pirates, a multiplayer game with a single player challenge mode, worthy of the price it has on the eShop?

Title: Monkey Pirates

System: Wii U (eShop)

Price: $4.99

Release date: 6/26/2014

The main game/story

While there isn’t much of a main story to this game, the main game is pretty much a multiplayer battle game against friends, so it’s a party game of sorts.

Graphics

The graphics are simple and cel shaded. which looks very nice. The character designs that show up on the TV/Gamepad are also well designed as well. The Gamepad menu screen were made to look nice, though on the TV it isn’t quite as nice…

Music and sound effects:

Music isn’t necessarily a big requirement when it comes to a game like this,  though it has to not sound awful. And well, it does succeed in that. The music fits the theme of being on sea, and the sound effects make sense with whatever they are associated with. It’s just right here.

Gameplay

The main meat of the game are two multiplayer modes. The normal multiplayer mode (referred to as the classic mode) is just an ordinary mode where you and a few friends pilot ships and try to collect more treasure than your friends, by sinking their ships to hinder their progress. It’s a ton of fun and is the main reason to pick up this game! The other mode included, Sea King, uses the gamepad as a guide of sorts, and the gamepad player can use it to their advantage, causing trouble or helping out other players! Using the rarely utilized 5 player multiplayer of the Wii U, it’s also a lot of fun, even if it’s not quite as entertaining as the classic mode.

Of course, being a multiplayer focused experience, this game might not seem like it would be fun at all if you play in single player. Well, luckily the developer knew this might be the case and added in a tiny bit of single player to keep you occupied. The tutorial mode teaches you how to play and all of the main controls, while How to Play does the same but in a text format. Once you know how to play, you can play the multiplayer modes, as well as the single player challenge mode. The challenge mode is a lot of fun for a single player mode, as it’s basically a high score mode where you try to complete certain objectives within a time limit (such as destroy a certain amount of ships, get a certain amount of treasure, etc), getting a gold, silver or bronze medal. There isn’t any online leaderboards unfortunately, but posting to the miiverse community is a good remedy for that.

Conclusion

Having friends around in this forest I’m in for the summer, it was easy to get people to play with me. And we all had a blast! This is a great multiplayer game and if you have friends around often, you should download this ASAP! But if you are a single player, there isn’t much to find here. The challenge mode, while very fun, is also rather short. Besides posting high scores to miiverse, and battling with CPUs in the multiplayer mode, it ends up having as much replay value as a NES launch title! But still, the fact that it’s a short but sweet single experience, and an amazing, remarkable multiplayer mode, makes this worth getting at it’s current price. I therefore give Monkey Pirates a 7 out of 10.

Thanks to Henchmen Studio for the review code