Gruesome Games - Yokai Monk (ZX Spectrum)

 

Yokai Monk (ZX Spectrum)

Things have taken a turn for the worse up at the old monastery. The local Yokai have gotten a bit restless and decided to invade the place! Spirits and demons have crept into every corner, and are causing all sorts of havoc....

Luckily, one young monk has been perfecting a specific power over the last few months. A power that will be very handy against the creepy critters, and essentially make them solve the problem themselves! Meditating in the corner of a dark cell, the young monk chanted to himself..."The confinement is only for the body, never for the spirit, EACH ENEMY IS A WEAPON."

WANDERING SPIRIT TECHNIQUE!

With this special power, Shen Li, for that is the name of the young apprentice, can leave his physical body and move into the astral plane, where he can float around in spirit form. This allows him to reach the various Yokai, and leap into their bodies! Now that the creatures are possessed by Shen Li, he can manoeuvre them around and make them run into traps, eat each other alive, etc. and solve the monastery's putrid pest problem!

And so when you start the game, you can either use a joystick or the Q, A, O, P, and SPACE keys to take control of Shen Li's spirit, and puzzle through the levels, finding the best ways to dispose of the demons. Floating into a creature will possess it, and you can leave the body again by pressing DOWN. There are spikes to impale them, boxes to be dropped on their heads and various other enviromental hazards that will finish them off. The FIRE button will only come into effect when you find an ONI, a specific type of Yokai and the only one who can shoot. 

I've been enjoying this one since it came out a few days ago! I love the mechanic of possessing the baddies and making them hurt each other, and a few of the levels I've played so far have had me scratching my head for a minute or two as I try to work out which enemies to move where. If you get stuck on a particular puzzle, there's a handy restart feature which will put everything back to the start of the level when you press R...

The controls work well, but can be a bit fiddly at first. And another issue I was having was that if I stopped moving for a few seconds to think about what to do, the level would automatically reset itself, thinking I was stuck. But once I worked out that this was happening, it wasn't to difficult to keep moving so it didn't happen again.

There's a small but nice selection of Yokai to look at that give the game a nice Japanese flavour, with Karakasa umbrellas and Ogama toads among them...And another thing I'm loving is the great 128k soundtrack by Mr. Rancio! It adds to the atmosphere and had me tapping my toes as I fought off the foes...

Yokai Monk was programmed and designed by Ariel Endaraues, and can be downloaded from their itch.io page by clicking here! While the game is free, you can donate as much as you like to help fund further games and projects!

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