Esc ape from Planet of the Robot Monsters

This evil little game leads you to believe that you will be finishing it in no time flat. With only ten levels of monkey defense it's sure to be quick, right? Well, it wasn't for me, maybe I'm a big robot killing noob but I played this game for over an hour before I got all of the levels finished. Yes, I was using the level codes, that is why my resulting score was pretty dismal but I still placed in the top 15.. go figure.

In this game, you are some creepy brown and white dude who can't close his mouth and has a gun. Your monkey friend Scrappy is the brains of the operation and he is going to open the door to each level so you two can escape. Your sole mission is to keep him safe from the attacking robots and keep yourself alive. Here is the fun thing about that surviving, you and your monkey can only take one hit. If he gets hit, your done. If you get hit, your done. Keeping that in mind, it's useful to know that your bounding box includes your gun. This means, if your gun gets hit, you die. The robots must have some kind of electric current running through them that transfers from your gun to you causing insta-death.

So, we have the simple idea down. Kill the robots, don't die, escape the level.

To add to your gaming enjoyment, there is the added risk of collecting power-ups during your fight for survival. The evil little robots drop grenades, power-ups that will increase the power and length of your gun, and the ever elusive time reducer. Grenades are tiny little balls of awesome. You can carry a max of three of these at a time and they will kill all the robots on the screen. These are so super extremely useful it's mind boggling.. OK it may not be mind boggling but they are very useful.

You get to defend your little monkey friend for ten levels of super annoyance. For the first six levels I didn't need to jump or move around much. There was a lot of switching back and forth to shoot targets but I didn't feel the need to change platforms at all. On level six I found it easiest to stand on the right side and shoot them all down. Save yourself frustration and don't scoot far enough forward that your gun peeks out even the tiniest bit. After level six, you will need to move much more to get to those robots before they get to your monkey. For some reason, a majority of the people who make games like to make the last level so hard you want to smash your monitor and set fire to the internet. This game is no exception. In level ten there is a platform that is so conveniently placed as to drop a robot directly onto your poor unsuspecting monkey. I have tried such techniques as shooting the robots as they fall and yelling at the game. Neither of these worked for me. I just wasn't able to shoot fast enough to get them before they fell and I don't think this game has ears, so, my solution is to stock up on bombs. To get max use out of your bomb, wait until that first robot is falling in the air towards your monkey. This will ensure that you will get any trailing robots also on the platform. This technique is what finally won the game for me and the coveted spot in the top fifteen high-scores.

By now you are probably thinking shut up already and give me the level codes so I can try them out myself. You won't be getting anything that easy Mr./Ms./Mrs. Impatient. First off there is a little something to understand about the level codes. As I was dutifully scrawling each code down on a scrap of paper, Dig sauntered in, took one glance at them and said something like hey I bet I can crack those codes and he proceeded to do so.

Your level code looks something like this: ADA0x0syysge. What do all those seemingly random letters and numbers mean to you? This mayhem is actually telling the game some important things about what level you will jump to, how many bombs you have and how powerful your gun is upon entering this level. You can break your level code up into four parts each with three components. ADA, 0x0, syy, sge. The first three letter section tells the game which level you are jumping to, the next three, state how many bombs you will have on level entry, the third set of three say just how powerful your laser is and the last set explain the length of your laser. So your code goes, level, bombs, laser power, laser length. With a little bit of testing we found out how the bomb and gun sections of the code works. The gun codes are simply number substitution and work if you use letters or numbers.



Last Edited on 21 December 2009 @ 5:07pm

The level codes are as follows:

lvl 2 = ADA
lvl 3 = BAZ
lvl 4 = COP
lvl 5 = DSE
lvl 6 = EFI
lvl 7 = FIG
lvl 8 = GLU
lvl 9 = HUI
lvl 10 = IUH

The bomb codes:

0 bombs = 0x0
1 bomb = 198
2 bombs = 2d8
3 bombs = 36i

Substitution codes for gun power:

s = 0
g = 1
r = 2
v = 3
a = 4
y = 5
e = 6
b = 7
l = 8
i = 9

Number range for 3rd set of three:

050 - 999

Number range for last set of three:

015 - 999

For the last two sets of numbers that describe your laser's power, you can put in pretty much any numbers you want to with some exceptions. The first of the last two sets needs to be between 050 and 999, the last set needs to be between 015 and 999. If you go lower or higher then you will be stuck at level one with the minimums. So say I wanted to start level 2 with max bombs and laser, my level code would look like :

ADA 36i 999 999 / ADA 36i iii iii.

Or maybe I want to start level 10 with 1 bomb and
a really powerful but short laser :


IUH 198 999 015 / IUH 198 iii sgy.

Of course you need to remove the space when you put the codes into the game but I space it to show the separate sections. Do with this information what you will, whether it be to defeat my dismal score or to rule the world, it is in your hands now. I personally no longer have any desire to frustrate myself with this game and I would not have played this game any further than about level four if I were not determined to beat this game that tried so hard to beat me. Don't get me wrong, it has it's good points. It has nice graphics and a nice and consistent 50s/fallout theme, but it's not enough to make me want to play again.

-Deku


Last Edited on 21 December 2009 @ 5:18pm