Banana Bliss: Jungle Puzzles (3DS)

Details: Category: 3DS; By Cheryl Gress; 20.Jan; Hits: 8399

Game Info:

Banana Bliss: Jungle Puzzles
Developed by: Mechanic Arms
Published by: Teyon
Release Date: December 19, 2013
Genre: Puzzle
Available on: 3DS
Number of Players: Single-Player
ESRB Rating: Everyone
Price: $3.99

Thank you Teyon for sending us this game to review!

Morris the monkey wants to win the affection of Molly by collecting and offering her hearts found throughout the jungle. If he REALLY wants to impress her he'll find and bring her the hidden banana in each of the three hundred and fifty levels. There are seven worlds with different backdrops and they contain fifty levels each.

The levels are rated in difficulty from one heart to ten, with ten being the hardest difficulty. At first, the levels are crazy easy where you can have it solved in a few steps/seconds. Morris is defenseless and cannot jump or attack enemies. He'll have to avoid touching them and climb and later gets the ability to bounce off of certain blocks to get around.

Highlights:

Strong Points: Cute graphics; lots of puzzles; cheap
Weak Points: Some of the levels are frustrating but you can always skip them
Moral Warnings: Mild fantasy violence

There are plenty of objects to manipulate in this game, and the order and timing is crucial. Some blocks will only stay in the air for five seconds. If Morris gets squished, you'll have to restart the level from the beginning. Some blocks move to the side in one direction and if you're on the wrong side you may find yourself stuck and have to restart the level. Many levels have various creatures to avoid and occasionally you get to freeze them in place and use them as stairs. The tricky part is freezing them at the proper moment, or else you'll have to restart the level. Fortunately, the developers made restarting easy to do by pressing the X button. The Y button will bring you back to the level selection screen.

Even though this is a 3DS game, I was surprised that the touch screen was not used for starting the game or selecting the worlds or levels. The 3D effects look good though. An option to share and compare your completion times with friends would have been a nice feature to have.

Score Breakdown:
Higher is better
(10/10 is perfect)

Game Score - 78%
Gameplay - 16/20
Graphics - 7/10
Sound - 7/10
Stability - 4/5
Controls - 5/5 Morality Score - 96%
Violence - 8/10
Language - 10/10
Sexual Content - 10/10
Occult/Supernatural - 10/10
Cultural/Moral/Ethical - 10/10

You are timed, but the counter goes up to let you know how long you're taking in solving the puzzle. The level is beaten when Morris collects and brings all of the hearts to Molly. You can go back to beat your score or to find the hidden banana if you missed it. When you retrieve the banana, you are given the option to save the replay of your performance.

While collecting bananas is optional, every tenth level is locked until at least five bananas before it have been found. After more than half of a row has been beaten by hearts or bananas, the next row becomes available. You can play the seven worlds in any order, but the puzzles get harder in each new world.

This is a great pick up and play game and the graphics are really cute. My kids have watched me play and have beaten a few levels for me. The sound effects are cute and the background music is pleasant to listen to. The eShop price is $3.99 which is very reasonable when you take into consideration that there are over three hundred levels to play. While there are some easy levels, there's a fair amount of tough ones as well. I recommend this game to any puzzle lover.