Monkey Quest vs The Survivalists
Monkey Quest
Monkey Quest is a child-friendly MMORPG/ virtual world game set in the beautiful, isometric (platformer-like) world of Ook. Play as an adorable monkey, which you can customize as you wish, and set off on an RPG-like adventure where you'll complete quests given by other monkeys you meet along the way. The monkey you play as will also need a class, and you can choose from being a Pirate to a Wizard to a Ninja or even to a Viking.Being part of an MMORPG, you'll also get to play with your friends and journey together in a group, battling enemies along the way. As you level up, you'll also gain more powerful and cool-looking skills to help you defeat tougher foes. You can even buy a pet who will help you during combat. For the explorers at heart, there are plenty of locations for you to explore as well.
However, the best thing about this game is that it is designed with a younger audience in mind, and thus, the game has plenty of restrictions in place to help safeguard these younger players from potential cyber harm. This also allows parents to turn this game into a fun family-bonding activity.
That said, Monkey Quest has been shut down quite some time ago and if you're interested to find another game that both you and your kids will be able to enjoy, you might want to take a look at our list of alternative games.
The Survivalists
The Survivalists is a survival-themed adventure game focusing on exploring a vast archipelago filled with hidden secrets and treasures as well as mysterious temples and dangerous terrains. The goal here is not only to make a life for yourself by recruiting and training the local monkeys to help with your many mundane chores, but to find a way to crack the mystery shrouding the archipelago and possibly find a way to finally escape!The Survivalists has a sandbox-style, survival-themed gameplay, which means that you’re expected to gather plenty of resources from the environment, use them to build a base of operations… or even multiple outposts and bases… and make sure you’ve got plenty of protection ready for when the local hostile tribesmen attack you, which they do from time to time.
The map here is simply amazing and if you just love exploring, you’ll find the island-hopping experience here pretty satisfying… that is once you’ve got your raft built. Of course, being set in the tropics, there isn’t a whole lot of different biomes to discover, though there are volcanic and swampy areas that are more dangerous than the normal terrain. Even the sea contains dangers and you’ll do well to avoid the ravenous sharks that are looking for an easy meal.
The best and most interesting part about The Survivalists that really help it stands out from all the other generic sandbox survival games is the fact that you can “recruit” monkeys on the island to help you with any mundane tasks. This encompasses all tasks that can be easily replicated by the monkeys. After all, monkey see, monkey do!
That being said, training your monkeys is, unfortunately, also the most frustrating part of the game. Unlike games with macros, you can’t really save the tasks you’ve taught your monkey as general macros that you can then use whenever you need the same tasks done sometime in the future. Instead, every time you need your monkeys to do something, you’ll have to teach it all over again… which frankly speaking is very annoying.
All in all, The Survivalists is as addictively fun as it looks. Being a survival-themed sandbox adventure, there is plenty of stuff you can craft, items to gather, loyal monkeys to train, and bases to set up as you slowly and steadily explore every inch of the massive archipelago. However, the game isn’t without its flaws and I personally think that the game could have made the monkey-training part a bit more convenient and less annoying for the player.