Our Town of Halloween
The village has been overrun by monsters. Skeletons, ghouls and all kinds of unspeakable horrors have taken up residence, and the only one able to drive them out… is you! Luckily, you have just the thing. The trap is set.
The plan? Simple. You have a cannon. All you need to do is launch a bomb at the circular saw, which will roll down the hill, knock over the wooden plank, push the boulder into the canyon and activate a chain of bombs in order to ignite a flammable barrel that launches a large rock into the air, destabilizing the stone platform, causing the monsters to fall straight into the grinder!
It’s a foolproof plan. Confident, you aim the cannon, light the fuse, and… you can hear the stray scream of a pumpkin as the bomb streaks through the air above the horde, exploding harmlessly on a nearby steel wall.
…Dang. Might as well restart the level.
See Something Strange?
Crush The Monsters: Cannon Game is a physics-based puzzle game developed by HeroCraft. It was originally released in 2011 under the name “Roly-Poly Monsters” but was removed from the store and re-released under a new name with minor changes. For example, the blood was turned from red to green, and some levels were altered to make for a better difficulty curve. The review won’t hold this fact against the game. I want to evaluate the title based purely on its merits, but I thought it’d be good to have this information out there anyway.
So what is Crush The Monsters: Cannon Game? If you’ve ever heard of Angry Birds, you’ll get the general gist of it. You have a cannon, and you tap-and-hold on the screen to aim it. Release the screen to shoot a bomb in the desired direction. Kill as many Halloween-esque monsters as possible—preferably all of them.
Instead of using the explosion of the bomb projectile to achieve victory though, the game most often revolves around activating various gruesome contraptions. Putting monsters on a conveyor belt headed straight to a grinder, flinging spike-filled planks around using pure centrifugal force, or activating a chain of bombs to throw a circular saw into the air and into a spiral corridor of monsters—you’ll undoubtedly see a lot of creative stages. The levels don’t tend to be particularly difficult to figure out or execute, so the enjoyment comes primarily from the satisfaction of watching the contraptions at work—and it is very satisfying indeed.
Everybody Scream
Using an asset pack initially designed in 2011 makes Crush The Monsters: Cannon Game look and sound quite dated, but in this case, I can forgive it. The aesthetics aim for a very retro Halloween vibe and is not meant to be taken seriously. The monsters are just decorated balls, detailed and expressive enough to make it fun watching them roll around on the various stages.
The screams they let out when near danger can be a bit exhausting, but they just barely overstay their welcome, and hey—you’ll have your revenge soon enough. I also want to give special mention to the boss fight music. It really grabbed my attention the first time I heard it.
But what about the gameplay? A physics-based puzzle game lives or dies by its physics, and I’m glad to say this game pulled it off relatively well. The bomb you shoot is heavy and not bouncy, making aiming a relatively simple endeavor despite the lack of a dotted line showing you where you’re pointing that cannon.
By contrast, the monsters are very light and lack friction. If they start rolling, they won’t stop until they actually hit something. This makes the physics very predictable and reliable, which is crucial for such a puzzle game. The same action should always have the same result.
Trick or Treat
My biggest gripe about Crush The Monsters: Cannon Game was the monetization. While there is no in-game store or paid content (to my knowledge), the title is filled with advertisements. Most of the time, an ad covers part of the stage on top of the screen. One time a particularly large ad ended up covering up the solution to a puzzle, making the level impossible to complete.
Anytime you complete or restart a level, there’s a good chance that an ad will play. You can also skip any level by watching an ad. There is no limit to this—you can potentially finish the game without beating a single level. The optimist in me says that this allows you to customize the difficulty entirely to your preferences. Still, it’s an awkward design choice.
There is of course the option of paying for the game to remove the ads. The price might change by region, but it should be around 2 dollars. If you enjoy the game, it could be worth going for it, but your mileage may vary.
Crush The Monsters: Cannon Game is hard to evaluate. Your enjoyment of the title will be determined purely by your own preferences. If you enjoy difficult action games that challenge your skill, this is not the game for you. If you’re just looking for a relaxed time watching monster balls fall victim to crazy contraptions and pop into green goop, you could get a few hours of fun out of it. I think it might be worth a try, mainly to find out how wild the stages can get.
