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You really shouldn't feed the monkeys!

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Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099

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Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099 (Reviewed)

Developer: Fictiorama Studios

Publisher: Joystick Ventures

Released: May 25th, 2023

Price: $15 USD

Do Not Feed the Monkeys 2099 is a choices matter simulation game. Where you are in charge of keeping an eye on subjects via a network of surveillance cameras, under the watchful eyes of the organization pulling all of the strings.

A few surveillance cameras may be disturbing and that's the point, remember that this is a strategy game about how to balance your resources, money, and efficacy more so than feeling sorry for some of the subjects and their lives.

You'll be surveying in order to utilize information against your subjects or, to help them, but under no circumstances should you do so. Do not feed the monkeys!

Story

P.O.C

You belong to the Primate Observation Club. You inherited this position after your uncle passed, and their employment passed into your hands in the same way that their family members fell into theirs. It is your responsibility to perform duties allocated to you by the organization or face the consequences of your actions, such as failing to achieve sufficient objectives or defying direct orders.

Subjects

The subjects all have their own stories, and the more cameras you unlock over time, the more difficult it becomes to keep up with them all without having to return to them a few times while also juggling fresh feeds. I found it much easier to blast through two feeds at once, with a third one to keep an eye on every now and then if something new appeared while I was working on the first two. Even so, I managed to miss a lot of essential words in certain circumstances.

The Fear of Missing Out

It will affect you in the same way that it affected me. The game does an excellent job of generating a busy and frustrating situation in which you have a limited amount of time to complete some of these objectives. This sensation will soon wash over you as you become more focused too much on all of the filler feeds.

30minute Gameplay

Story Progression

This is most likely the game's intended direction, getting under your skin when you fail to keep up with the stories that keep repeating themselves over and over, while you keep missing that one prompt that is in between the other two or three feeds that also need to be completed, but unless you're quick, you'll lose them all to time be it having to sleep, eat or work, voiding that objective entirely.

The only option to satisfy that need to interact with the subjects or fulfill your responsibility is to restart the game with a fresh knowledge of what needs to be done and when it needs to be done on the schedule you should be following.

Finally, if you truly want to focus on one narrative because you are interested in that character, it is preferable to focus on it initially and then finish it swiftly on the second pass around while focusing on another feed. Eventually, you'll have to perform all of them swiftly, which will take a large number of playthroughs for the greatest potential endings if that is something you so desire.

Keywords

All you'll be doing is staring at a screen and completing tasks. You won't be doing anything else outside of sleeping working and making rent payments along with food management while searching for all of the keywords required to fulfill the given story objective. You will fail that feed if you do not find it in time.

Game Modes

If you're like me and prefer to unwind a little, you may enable the special game mode(s) once you have unlocked them over time to make the management of your health, hunger, and sleep a little more successful, making it more of a solve the feed cases type of game with no pressure to accomplish things quickly.

Personally, I like Relax Mode and Peep Hole since they provide very useful management, for individuals who prefer to get things done fast rather than staring at a feed for 10 minutes would be better off using Speed Up Time.

Issues

It can be too silent

While the gameplay is centered on being a strange voyeur spying in on people's lives, for better or worse. It's all just a little too quiet. The background atmosphere of an apartment complex is great especially when there is music being played from another tenant down the hall or as the trucks and machines / robots make noises outside your window. There is just a serious shortage of general music.

It would be great if you could have your own music in the game perhaps purchased by the delivery app or even a radio. While you can certainly go to YouTube and listen to whatever you prefer I was hoping it would be something to fill in the long drawn out silence interrupted by sudden knocking or ambience.

Lack of activity feeds

I find that there is just too much filler in the game where if you have 25 cameras currently activated there are only at any given time 3 or 4 active feeds to view from while the others all take up space as a way to distract you.

I realize this may seem contradictory to my other statement, which is that I dislike having to manage all of these things, but I would much rather handle say... 25/25 cameras and have more material than what seems to have been 8/25 at any given time in a full 4 hour run with the same dialogue over and again.

You begin with four cameras and gradually increase it an additional five through the course of the game. But at first, it's two feeds and two fillers. Adding 5 more feeds added 3 new filler making it 5/9, and so on until the majority of the feeds are just filler with 3-4/25 active feeds. It would be nice to have the ability to get rid of finished feeds and continue more stories in their place.

Conclusion

It's alright

It's nothing too special but stays true to the original. I'm more of a narrative type so it frustrates me if I have to play a game 5-6 times to acquire the whole tale of an individual and a good ending while not receiving any fresh kinds of dialogue in the process since it is all relatively linear with not a lot of replay value here.

The game repeats the same lines over and over until that story concludes with or without your intervention. Oftentimes with only a few missing conversation pieces in between that you could have solved if you weren't sleeping / working.

While I didn't receive a satisfying ending, it's likely that the game will unlock more stuff based on how well you do on your final review, including game modes.

I'm unsure since, from what I could see, it seemed a little too linear in its current state, with the same repetitive feeds and filler appearing on every single run with the same dialogue just in a different order until you stumble upon them.

I enjoy the game, and I expect others will as well, particularly lovers of the original. However, I don't see myself playing it for more than the 5 hours I spent playing it for my review. There are simply better games that cater to my demands as a non-linear gamer that would like a more open approach to narratives.

This concludes my views of this game; while my opinions may be met with criticism, that is what distinguishes gamers; you don't have to like the same things as others, nor do you have to agree with them.

If you want to catch me on one of my streams or locate me on social media, you may do so at the following locations, I'm always playing something new.

- Pawkt