Monsters Ate My Condo Review

Take the block balancing game Jenga, mix it with a Godzilla movie marathon, make the whole thing into a Saturday morning cartoon and that will just begin to scratch the surface of the insanely entertaining hodgepodge that is Monsters Ate My Condo. Players should really expect nothing less from the publisher, Adult Swim, which has brought several oddball entries to iOS catalog including titles like 5 Minutes to Kill (Yourself): Reloaded and Robot Unicorn Attack. Still, as insane as this game might sound, the experience is focused, fine tuned, and extremely well polished.

The game is centered around an apartment building created by condos that fall from the sky and stack up on top of one another which is surrounded on both sides by huge cartoon monsters. The player must pull condos from the building stack and feed them to the monsters on either side. There are four different monsters (of which only two appear on screen at once) and each monster corresponds to a certain color of condo: red, green blue, or yellow. By feeding the monsters condos that match their color, players make them happy. Feeding monsters condos of the wrong color will make them angry and they will threaten to knock over the growing stack of condos. The condos are precariously balanced and pulling condos out to feed to the monsters causes them to shift. While feeding the monsters, the player must also adjust the stack of condos so that it doesn't fall over. When the stack falls over the game ends.

Matching three or more condos of the same color in the stack will create bronze condos, three bronze will create a silver, three silver will create a gold condo, and so on. These special condos can be fed to the monsters to activate special powers that affect the game in different ways like slowing down time or straightening the pile of condos. The more special the condo, the longer the special power effects will last. There are also condos that present obstacles to players as well. Bomb condos will explode unless matched quickly and can easily topple the stack if players aren't careful. Cinder block condos can't be fed to the monsters and must be matched to get rid of them.

Monsters Ate My Condo is a quick paced game with tons going on at once, but it is beautifully balanced and everything works so well in tandem. The games bright, flashy visuals border on insanity and add to the intensity and fun. This is a superb game and it strikes a perfect balance between simple gameplay and interesting and varied mechanics. Players will no doubt have a great time flinging buildings into these monster's bellies over and over again.