Do Not Feed The Monkeys Review
Prince Aboubakar
Whitaker identifies monkeys as challenges, obligations,and problems that pop up in our jobs on a daily basis (p.3), but most importantly he identifies our role in shifting those monkeys back to where they belong: quickly, efficiently and without guilt.
I admit it. I feed the monkeys. In all aspects of my life I feed the monkeys. Initially I think some level of feeding the monkey is necessary but to continue to feed the monkeys does not serve anyone well.
Monkeys come in many shapes and sizes. It is natural for many leaders, especially me, to make the mistake of taking on monkeys, thinking that they are helping others. Placing the monkey back where it belongs does not make one a weak leader, nor does it make them unaccountable. In fact, strong leadership effectively and efficiently shifts the monkey back it where belongs and allows leaders to move forward with bigger goals while protecting and supporting colleagues who make every attempt to support the goals of the organization. Most importantly, by recognizing the monkeys and putting them squarely back where they belong, you are modeling accountability. As someone whose natural tendency is to feed the monkeys, this is much easier said than done! BUT it is vital to an organization that our best employees, as well as ourselves, are protected from taking on these monkeys!
Invited to the mysterious "Primate Observation Club", your task is to observe "the monkeys" through a series of cameras, while reporting back on your findings to the Club by responding to their email requests for information. Feeding back your accrued knowledge gets you paid, and getting paid allows you to buy more cameras to spy on more "monkeys". Voyeurism is addictive, though, and you'll need to pay attention to your overall health, hunger and fatigue levels.
The sum of all these disparate elements is a game that's shockingly enjoyable, and with some real tension. Sure, if you fail you'll start over from scratch, but it's not like the more traditional "roguelike" offerings in this saturated genre of indies. There are multiple endings and many, many cameras to see on each playthrough, and progress can be saved in a traditional way. We'd argue that calling Do Not Feed The Monkeys a roguelike in any respect does it something of a disservice, pigeonholing the game in a way that doesn't reflect the experience of actually playing it.
On top of this, we encountered a pretty major bug where the notebook simply wouldn't go away when we tried to close it. This left us unable to continue without reloading our game, which is far from ideal. These issues aside, it can also be frustrating when you're trying keywords that really should shed some further light on a subject, but the game decrees aren't quite the right ones. Progress, as a result, can sometimes feel arbitrarily limited; you want to be following the cameras at all times, but you may be forced into a situation where you need to simply work all day to afford food or rent, which means waiting around while you undergo these time-consuming and repetitive tasks.
Do Not Feed The Monkeys isn't a perfect game by any means, and its minor interface and design hiccups are unfortunate. Thankfully, these small irritations do not serve to massively undermine what Fictiorama Studios has achieved here; the capacity for indie developers to come up with novel ideas never ceases to impress, and this is a doozy of a concept. Weaving together the "monkeys'" stories is rewarding and satisfying, and there's an impressive sense of foreboding to the whole thing. You'll play Do Not Feed The Monkeys through to the end more than once, believe us.
Stuart is a seasoned reviewer, games writer, and author who also makes comics, videos, and podcasts. You can hear him regularly on Retronauts and his book, All Games Are Good, examines the games that nobody else writes about.
@Coach_A Most games are on sale for pretty good prices when I buy them and I'm pretty frugal with other things. Even just the small things like choosing to cook over getting take out when I feel like it saves enough for an eShop game. As for playing them, most of my spare time goes towards playing the Switch. Much easier to find time to play here and there on a handheld than a home console. Would have been able to get through a lot more over the last few years though if I didn't put 1000+ hours into Isaac and Splatoon or 600+ into Animal Crossing this year, haha.
@Smashfan508 That's the one. I haven't played it for a fair while now but for a couple of years it was one of my go-to games to play between other games, or when I just wanted to chill and play something pretty effortless while watching Youtube or smething.
I could say that I believe in America because it rewarded my family's hard work to overcome poverty. I could say that I believe in holding on to rituals and traditions because they helped us flourish in a new country. But these concepts are more concretely expressed this way: I believe in feeding monkeys on my birthday -- something I've done without fail for 35 years.
When I was born, a blind, Buddhist monk living alone in the Burmese jungle predicted that my birth would bring great prosperity to the family. To ensure this prosperity, I was to feed monkeys on my birthday.
Trained as an attorney, Harold Taw is taking a break from legal work to complete his first novel, Adventures of the Karaoke King. He and his wife live in Seattle where Harold has special arrangements with a local zoo to feed their Goeldi's monkey on his birthday this year.
While this sounds superstitious, the practice makes karmic sense. On a day normally given over to narcissism, I must consider my family and give nourishment to another living creature. The monk never meant for the ritual to be a burden. In the Burmese jungle, monkeys are as common as pigeons. He probably had to shoo them away from his sticky rice and mangoes. It was only in America that feeding monkeys meant violating the rules.
As a kid, I thought that was cool. I learned English through watching bad television shows and I felt like Caine from Kung Fu, except I was the chosen warrior sent to defend my family. Dad and I would go to the zoo early in the morning, just the two of us. When the coast was clear, I would throw my contraband peanuts to the monkeys.
If only it were so easy. That time, I got lucky. I found out that a high school classmate trained the monkeys for the movie Out of Africa, so he allowed me to feed his monkey. I've had other close calls. Once a man with a pet monkey suspected that my story was a ploy -- that I was an animal rights activist out to liberate his monkey. Another time, a zoo told me that outsiders could not feed their monkeys without violating the zookeepers' collective bargaining agreement. In a pet store once, I managed to feed a marmoset being kept in a birdcage. Another time, I was asked to wear a biohazard suit to feed a laboratory monkey.
Our family has prospered in America. I believe that I have ensured this prosperity by observing our family ritual and feeding monkeys on my birthday. Do I believe that literally? Maybe. But I have faith in our family and I believe in honoring that faith in anyway I can.
Monkey Park Iwatayama is located on Mount Arashiyama, which is a district on the west side of Kyoto. This is a somewhat rural, albeit touristy district in the outskirts of Kyoto. Arashiyama is easily accessible from Kyoto Station, and is the second most popular district of Kyoto after Higashiyama.
By and large, this section of the Arashiyama mountains and Iwatayama Monkey Park are undeveloped. The monkeys roam freely between the area of the mountain untarnished by tourists, and the feeding area and pond. The monkeys are allowed to come and go as they please, and there are workers in Iwatayama Monkey Park who ensure that the creatures are treated with respect.
I love that you did the Monkey Park! One of the students who had been on our study abroad term the year before enthusiastically recommended it and it was a great experience. They really are everywhere and crazy! There was a really cute baby monkey that I kept trying to feed and another older monkey kept shoving him away ?
The most memorable moment was when one monkey stole the water bottle of a girl in our group. An employee dove after him down the mountain, climbed up the tree where he was, grabbed the bottle, gestured at the monkey, and got her the water bottle back!
Do not feed the monkeys is a colourful voyeuristic journey into shady organisations and oddball characters. Some of its systems aren't particularly well explained, but discovering a new nugget of information about a weird old man makes it all worthwhile.
Graves is an avid writer, web designer, and gamer, with more ideas than he could hope to achieve in a lifetime. But, armed with a mug of coffee and an overactive imagination, he'll try. When he isn't working on a creative project, he is painting miniatures, reading cheesy sci-fi novels, or making music.
I absolutely agree with the review but had some different experiences when it came to the puzzles. For me guessing the new innovative word combinations with the computer was absolutely tedious to the point where i got frustrated and ignored the cages i got stuck at completely and just worked through the days to at least unlock all of the modes.
If this is the sucessor at least give me a timetable functon so i have a easier time with tracking them or upgrades in the useless shop (yeah i know i can send chucky to the author guy but then dont make it so goddamn difficult getting his adress).
What they also changed was to only let you feed the monkeys ONCE, make another mistake and you are out but since the game itself actively drained my fun solving the puzzles in different ways i only got to see this message once, mabe because there werent much ways to do it in the first place and i just got lucky (and it was heavily inspired by the UFO guy from the first game, even the idol puzzle felt kinda familiar).