Here is my review of Monkey Arena.



Why I bought it:

It was last winter, nearing Christmas. My boss had just started bringing me to his weekly gaming group and they were having a Secret Santa game give away. I figured I would get a game for my boss for Christmas to join in the festivities. My girlfriend and I went to our local gaming store and looked around. We asked one of the employees what games were good at a reasonable price. He recommended Monkey Arena because, well, you can throw poo... This was the selling point for me. I thought that Monkey Arena could be a light game that could act as a filler between games, so I bought it.

Whats in the box

1 x Rules
1 x Board
8 x Monkey Pieces
8 x Monkey Cards
1 x Deck of action cards
5 x Dice

The game board is simple and small. There are clear paths to move along and spaces for the tokens. There isn't much complexity to the board.



The eight monkey pieces seem like they were stolen from a game of Sorry. There are eight different colors. Monkey shaped pieces would have been better. Along with the pieces there are eight monkey cards corresponding to the monkey token colors. The orientation of the card denotes the monkey's status which is either normal, dazed or knocked down. Each monkey has a special ability and a Health, Strength and Defense value. Some of the powers are poorly designed. For example, the Howler monkey has the ability: "All opponents' hand size is 4 cards. The Howler hand size remains 5 cards." This is a very confusing ability when trying to learn the rules because usually players have 5 cards. A better approach to this ability would have been giving the Howler an extra card.



The cards represent actions that the monkey can make on his turn and are relatively well made but can be rather confusing. Different cards do different things such as give you modifiers in combat or defense and other cards can heal you.



Game Play:

The mechanics of the game seem simple enough. Roll some dice and hope for the best. Basically, the person on defense is trying to roll the same numbers as the attacker to nullify each attack out. Higher or lower values don't matter. For example I am attacking and I roll three dice ( ,, ) and the defender rolls two dice ( , ) The two fives are canceled since the defender matched the number 5. Only the roll of 2 gets through and deals one damage. I believe this is a flawed mechanic and doesn't particularly work well.

Players can move one space each turn. Players can play as many cards during their turns as they like but can only make one attack and on their next turn draw replacement cards.

That's all this game offers...

Overall:

This game is very simple. Too simple. There is almost no strategy to be found. I do not recommend it to veteran gamers because of its flaws and poor mechanics. It make be enjoyable for non-gamer types who like simple games and enjoy funny themes. I give this game a 4 out of 10.