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Tiki Towers: Start Monkeying Around

Tiki Towers is a building game where you use various island objects to create bridges, wheels or towers for your monkeys to climb. Tiki Towers is quickly addictive and perfect for short bursts of play.

At first glance Tiki Towers seems so simple. Take a pre-determined set of bamboo sticks, coconuts or vines, and build a structure to get your monkeys across a divide so they can claim the prize on the other side. Along the way, they collect bananas. Easy, right?

Tiki Towers starts easy and get progressively more difficult. The twist is that your structure must be sound. So if you’re creating an archway, it must have support. If you’re making a bridge, it needs to be secured at each end. If your structure falls, your monkeys might die — or at the very least get stranded far from the treasure — and you will have to start over.

The physics of the game were a great surprise when I started. The towers sway and bridges bend as the monkeys bounce and swing their way across. This is where Tiki Towers gets tricky. Too much bouncing will break your structure and there’s not much you can do but wait to see of your monkeys make it across. Watch carefully, the bamboo will flash red to show you stress points while the monkeys are playing. If your structure breaks, this will give you an idea of where you need to reinforce it.

Those crazy primates may break your bridge, but they are also what give Tiki Towers its personality. They are super expressive — jumping for joy, grinning when they catch a banana, pouting when they’re stranded. Tower building may be the name of the game, but the monkey love is what makes it worth playing.

The only problem I have with Tiki Towers is that scrolling around the screen can be difficult. Often when trying to get an overview of the area, I would end up inadvertently adding points onto my structure. And, since there’s no easy “undo,” each accidental add-on is a two-step process of removing the bamboo sticks before I could continue playing.

As physic-based puzzlers go, Tiki Towers is one of the best. It’s among my current favorites — along with Toy Bot Diaries Entry 3 and Dizzy Bee 2.

There are 45 levels on five islands so it could take a while to make your way through Tiki Towers. Luckily, even if you finish the fun doesn’t have to end. Completing the levels will unlock additional features that provide new challenges for endless replayability.

Of course, I haven’t gotten that far yet. So, I’ll just have to let you know how the bonus features work out. If you’ve already made it through, leave a comment and let us know what you think.