since the game opens in full screen it's not as easy to see the controls in the description and the info panel at the starts seems.... rather empty. it wasn't clear that i could move or aim at all so i was rather confused as to what i was supposed to do when i could only throw random fruit at one weird angle. i also didn't read the text at first (my bad) so i was wondering why my monkeys were such lazy bums!!!
as expected, the art on this looks amazing, the monkeys all have fun and distinct designs, everything is so cute and fun to look at. but things like the very empty text boxes, fruit counters blending into the wood of the trees so it's hard to see them, a health ui that's kind of small and not intuitive to see at a glance how many lives you still have, that makes the overall visual package feel less rounded to me. the bindle to get rid of monkeys is cute! but i might have to look up what a bindle is instead of just seeing the icon next to what it does? i also didn't see any reason to ever use it anyways, there doesn't seem to be a scenario where you would want to get rid of a monkey since they're not so easy to replace. i tested it, in case they could save a monkey on low health or something, but no....
another thing is that despite the distinct designs, it was still hard to intuit what each monkey did. unlike plants vs zombies where you can visually see that plants like sunflowers have nothing to attack with, peashooters and cabbage-pults have something to send out and cherry bombs and squashes face us instead of the zombies since they're temporary nukes that don't stay to attack ahead of them, most the monkeys don't have anything on them to indicate what they do. even the large apple gorillas, which i think were the best at intuiting they were big and beefy and meant for the frontline, there's a shield one and a bonk one and i didn't even realize until later that you could tell them apart by a red band they had on so i was pretty much gambling on hoping i got the right one with them. the two blueberry monkeys particularly tripped me up, i discovered one of them self destructed before i even realized the others attacked in three lines.... but what's the connection between the two of them? in a panic it's really easy to accidentally waste of those bombs placing them in the backline. i'm still confused about what the orangutans are good at, and what's meant to be good counters to specific machines.
honestly, these controls. the controls do noooot feel good to me. i neeeed this game to be entirely drag and drop, let us drag and drop fruits on to the monkeys, that would've felt soooo much better. even just changing the E input to spacebar so you can do it with your thumb instead of switching between movement and action with the same fingers. focusing on walking to the right fruit and grabbing them with one hand, then lining up to the right monkey with the other hand, then back to the other hand to throw, felt soooo awkward and fiddly to me. often, the fruit i want is on the other side of the screen or hasn't spawned back yet. and then i also have to drag and drop these monkeys to the other other side of the screen, there is wayyy to much distance having to be traveled between both inputs and juggling them at once is just :( not fun :(((
i'm pretty bummed that i can't have more fun with this game!! i'd really like to strategically manage and arrange my monkey units against the different enemy types but i can barely pay attention to what specific enemies even do when i'm chasing down fruits like this.... i could see this being an interesting challenge in trying to optimize against the awkward (dare i say terrorist) controls, and i'd like to see what happens when you defeat the final boss. i want to defeat the final boss, but with so many games in the queue and how frustrating it feels to play i don't really want to keep playing. i kept trying it again anyways because it seems like i'm in the minority here? i do like the style and concept, and i don't wanna blame the game for my own skill issue, but i still can't feel good about the controls. sorry :(