Chimpuzzle Pro (Wii U) Review

In Chimpuzzle Pro the goal is to guide the monkey Beebo past all dangers and to the goal, a banana. To do this, Tetris-shaped blocks must be placed to cover all obstacles and death traps. Ten seconds are given to place blocks before Beebo starts his seemingly suicidal path towards the banana.

Thoughts are immediately directed towards the old puzzle game Lemmings, and it is very clear that Chimpuzzle Pro has taken inspiration both from that game and Tetris in its game design. Good choices indeed, as the concept and the puzzles are really entertaining, however, this game is sadly filled with flaws that do not do its concept justice.

The greatest flaw is how short the game is. Chimpuzzle Pro comes with 15 stages. Yes, only 15 stages, most of which can be played through in under a minute. For a £1.99 game not much is expected, but the fact that the game can easily be played through to 100% completion in less than half an hour on the first playthrough is really unsettling because, contrary to what one might think, the low number of stages are neither long nor hard to beat. There are several free-to-play games that offer way more content than this, and could easily have been fixed by adding a stage creator tool. As it is, now the game is too short-lived to offer any value.

Another flaw is the graphics. While they look ancient, it is justified due to the price of the game, but the colour choices are not, and it becomes a remarkable problem. Beebo has almost an identical colour to the background, which makes it hard to follow his walk on the screen, and is troublesome if blocks still need to be placed after Beebo has already started moving, causing stupid deaths simply because he could not be seen. This is also an easily resolvable problem; the developers could have simply given Beebo a pink t-shirt or a baseball cap, just like many other designers do if they run into similar problems.

There are some other aspects of this game that also reek of laziness from the side of the developer. The countdown number, for example, covers an unnecessarily big part of the screen, and for some unknown reason has priority over both the blocks that need moving and even the start menu. This can make it hard to manoeuvre blocks at times. The last horrific sign of laziness is found within the instruction manual/tutorial of the game. How blocks fall are decided by where the TV screen camera is located. This is not stated anywhere in the instruction manual or in the game itself. It also isn't even mentioned that the camera can be moved by pressing A and Y, which is important knowledge to control the blocks and not something one would easily think of - especially not if they play only on the GamePad, in which case the A and Y buttons will seem to do nothing at all.

There are still some very positive points in Chimpuzzle Pro, however. The concept and gameplay itself is very good, and it is fun and entertaining. The mix between the suicidal walker from Lemmings and the block placing from Tetris feels phenomenal, and makes one wonder why no one else has figured out this concept before. This is the poster game of a game with a good idea and good concept that sadly suffers from being rushed, and most likely having a very low budget. The concept is great, but the finished product isn't and feels half done, like a demo.