Do Not Feed the Monkeys Review (ThunderPeel2001)
I'm really on the fence about this one. I've given it a good go, and, on the one hand it's a very interesting and different, on the other it just doesn't quite reach its potential.
There's something very similar to Papers, Please about this game, and it's more creatively diverse than that game... but I was just left feeling quite dissatisfied with the results. Maybe I've been too spoiled with the likes of Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol, but this just isn't quite in the same league as those games.
I found the gameplay in Do Not Feed the Monkeys to be quite tedious once the sheen of a new thing had worn off. It turns out I got the "best" ending on my first playthrough (time taken: 4.5 hours) and then I went back to see what I'd missed.
I realised that the puzzles are pretty random (example; you conclude one storyline by secretly sending alcohol to a recovering alcoholic -- there's no hints that you should do this, I only discovered the "solution" from reading a guide after my first playthrough), and this adds to the tedium: Reading overly verbose and uninteresting dialogue, waiting for a tiny fraction of a clue, isn't fun.
It's the type of game that, on your first playthrough, you'll think is amazing and so different, but on going back you'll realise wasn't all that interesting.
Which isn't to say the idea doesn't have a lot of potential, it absolutely does: Give the player some more QOL tools, improve the storylines and dialogue, make the puzzles more logical and satisfying, and you'd probably have a FANTASTIC game.
This was a brilliant and interesting start... it just doesn't reach its full potential. And apparently its sequel is just more of the same, which has led to some negative reviews. Such a shame.
If the writers stopped trying to sound like Rockstar ("we're so nihilistic and cynical, yay!"), thought about which aspects of the game were FUN and which were BORING, and then set about putting together a really interesting story, they'd have solid gold on their hands.
This is an interesting experiment that you should pick up when the game is on sale, or if you're feeling particularly flush.