These monsters are certainly killing my free time…

MonsterKill ($0.99)

I always wonder how developers can make a game in a certain genre different enough to be worth giving a try. Then a game like Monster Kill comes along to answer my question.

It’s “castle defense” with a movie monster theme, and it’s actually quite amusing. Unfortunately, dodgy controls mire what would otherwise be a pretty enjoyable experience.

Presentation

The visuals in Monster Kill are outstanding. The characters look like they popped out of a Saturday morning cartoon, whether it be the mummy with its gold chain or Dracula sporting a pair of shades. The monsters are all extremely well animated, and even have different deaths when hit with the same spell.

The sound effects are a perfect compliment to the visuals. Each creature has their own moans and groans when they get slaughtered, my personal favorite being the giggle Dracula emits right before fluttering away. It’s almost as if he’s saying “I’ll be back”.

Controls

You wield a series of powerful spells that are cast by drawing gestures on the screen. That’s really all there is to controlling the game. The problem is that the gestures for the different spells are apparently not diverse enough for the game to be able to tell when you’re drawing one versus the other, and the spell that’s most beneficial is quite annoying to try and draw.

The lightning bolt is THE spell in this game, but its zig-zag pattern is often mistaken for the simple slash of the cut spell or the carat shape of the fireball spell. About the only one I’ve been able to execute without flaw so far is the ice spell, which is a V shape.

Game Play

In Monster Kill your goal is to destroy monsters. There are three game modes: Normal, Endurance and Onslaught. In Normal and Endurance modes you are trying to protect a series of barriers from a bunch of really aggressive monsters. In Onslaught mode you will face 101 monsters, and you must take out as many of them as you can. The monsters start somewhere between the middle and top of the screen and make their way down to the bottom of the screen.

In Normal and Endurance modes, once they get to the wall at the bottom of the screen they will start trying to tear it apart in their own unique ways (the wolfman will gnaw at it, while Frankenstein’s monster will just bang his head against it, for example). The wall has a certain number of hit points, and once those hit points are gone it’s game over. In Onslaught mode, once a creature reaches the bottom of the screen it’s gone, but you keep playing until all 101 monsters have appeared on the screen. You will just lose points for any monster that got past you.

So how do you stop these vile creatures? You have at your disposal four different spells that can take the beasts down. The most basic is a simple slash spell, but that only works on the mummies. Then you get fireball and lightning spells, which work better on some creatures than others, though the lightning bolt will definitely kill anything when it comes right down to it. The last spell is the ice spell, which actually creates a small wall of ice to block oncoming creatures. The spells are cast by drawing patterns on the screen, which as you can see in the Controls section is nicer in theory than in practice, at least for this game.

There is a store in the game that allows you to boost your defenses (in Normal and Endurance modes) and upgrade your mana regeneration and spell effects in all modes. You earn a dollar for every monster you kill, and once you complete a level you earn a token. Money is used to boost your defenses, while tokens are used to upgrade spells. One interesting tidbit is that in Normal mode, as long as you keep retrying a level when you die you’ll never lose any money that you’ve earned. The store is the least effective in Normal mode because by the time you’ve sufficiently upgraded anything, the game is over.

Suggestions

The biggest issue they need to address in Monster Kill is the way the spells are drawn. Most of my frustration with the game came from failed attempts at using the lightning spell because apparently I zigged when I was supposed to zag or something. It would also have been nice to have a couple more monsters thrown into the mix. I could easily see a swamp like creature (Creature From The Black Lagoon parody) and at least one other type of monster.

Conclusion

Despite the drawbacks with trying to draw some of the spells, this game does become quite addicting if you spend some time with it. The light hearted atmosphere, visual excellence and bouncy musical score make it easy to get wrapped up in the world of Monster Kill. Now if they could just make those spells a bit easier to execute, this could be the near perfect time killer.