Console Monster: Pixeljunk Monsters Mini-Review

Console Monster writes: "Most people who are familiar with Real Time Strategy games will have most likely heard the term 'tower defence'. For those of you who have not heard this term, a tower defence game is incredibly simple. It involves waves of creatures heading towards you, and your sole purpose is to build various different towers in order to defend against these beasties. Pixeljunk Monsters (PjM), the latest game from Q-Games, is an example of how this genre of game should be done.

When you load up PjM, one of the first things that you are likely to notice is it's graphical style, which is incredibly unique, taking on the appearance of a sort of cartoon watercolour painting. It really does look impressive, if a bit childish. The monsters throughout the game also take on this interesting art styling, and this translates into every aspect of the game, from the animations to the sound effects.

In PjM your objective is to protect your villagers from all manner of nasty beasties by building towers to blast beasties to kingdom come. Towers can be built on any of the many trees that are found in the levels, and different towers cost different amounts of coins. You begin with a set amount of coins, and creatures drop coins as you kill them. The other key item in the games comes in the form of little blue gems, which are used to upgrade your towers and to purchase new tower styles from your main base. Speaking of upgrading your towers, if you ever find yourself with no coins with which to build new towers, you can always just stand on top of one of your existing towers, which will send your character into a lovely little dance which will slowly power up your tower to the next level, increasing its range and damage..."