A Furry Retro-Inspired Beat 'em Up: A Chipmonk! Review

By Manuel

Players: 1-2
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC

Have you ever wanted to play a beat 'em up game but felt that playing as a rodent would make for the absolutely best experience? Well Niemi Bros. Entertainment and QUByte Interactive have brought you just that game in the form of Chipmonk! (Note: The "!" is part of the title, but I'll be leaving it off from here on.) This rather unique take on the genre is set to release on consoles soon, and we're going to take a look at it and see if this furry adventure is one that you're going to want to go on!

Chipmonk gives you the choice between three characters, all chipmunks of course. Grey is the balanced one, Cheeks is the big and strong one, and Red is the faster but weaker one. There's a little more that separates them, but you get the idea of what they're going for pretty fast. There isn't a lot of story in the game, and I don't think it's mentioned at all while playing, but it seems like a certain "Gluttonous Grey Squirrel" has stolen all the land's food stores and our heroes set out to save the land from starvation. The Grey Squirrel isn't alone though and has a whole furry army complete with rats, mice, porcupines, beavers, and even other types of squirrels. It's a beat 'em up so it's your job to wipe out every enemy on-screen, move on to the next, and then take out the boss encounter so you can progress to the next stage. Each of the three characters is armed with an appropriate fantasy era weapon, but they also know martial arts as evidenced by the flurry of punches and kicks that make of most of their attacks. They also each have magic that summons insect friends who perform a full-screen attack, but we'll talk about that later. There's a bit more to the gameplay though, so let's take a deeper look.

Take the fight to the trees!

This is actually the endless mode.

Let's talk about game modes first. There are two main game modes: Classic and Revengeance. Both are arcade-style modes that feature several stages each, with all stages being completely unique to each other. Classic splits stages among the four seasons, starting with Spring, and Revengeance has location based levels that culminate in reaching the Grey Squirrel's base. Besides these modes there is a versus mode and an endless mode which are pretty self-explanatory and won't be covered too much here. Actually, real fast, the duel mode is only between two local players, with each only being able to pick from the three main chipmunk characters. This mode would've been a lot more interesting if it was a more direct take on the one-on-one fighting game genre, but I guess that might be asking for too much. You have three lives and five continues to get through either of the main game modes, with no way to adjust these defaults in settings. I don't think there are any one-ups in the Classic mode, but you have the opportunity to get several in Revengeance. You can also play each game mode in single or two player mode, with the game being significantly easier if you're playing with a friend. Speaking of difficulty, there is no way to adjust that in-game either, but it should be mentioned that the Revengeance mode is notably harder than Classic. All game modes have their own scoreboards which seem based on enemies defeated. There's also an overall record of every item you've grabbed, enemy defeated, times died, and so on. While this spread of game modes isn't exactly unique, I did find the scoreboards interesting and the game having two full adventures surprised me.

A boss encounter.

The only good mouse is a dead mouse.

Even though there are two full game modes, they both share the same enemies. These come in various formations, but usually come at you in groups of four. It can be very hard to manage several enemies at once as they'll be doing their best to flank you, hence why multiplayer makes much of the game a cakewalk. Besides enemies there are flies that appear occasionally that drop both life (in the form of acorns) and magic refills (in the form of mushrooms), with Revengeance adding a fly that drops one-ups. These flies die after releasing a set number of items and are the only enemy that was leave if you don't kill them quickly. The fly items can also be found in boxes that can be destroyed in levels, but you can also find purple mushrooms that cause confusion. Confusion in this game means that your controls are completely flipped, not something you want by far. This makes opening boxes a deadly game of chance in single player, so I pretty much never bothered. Also, the mole-like martial artist enemies will randomly throw out those annoying purple mushrooms, so it's best to take them out quickly whenever they appear. You can also get a cherry power-up that makes you move faster and hit harder, but these are also only found in boxes so once again I rarely used then. Each level has a boss encounter, but these aren't exactly unique enemies. They're bigger and stronger yes, but you'll eventually start encountering them as regular enemies in future levels, and might even encounter them as "bosses" again. Oh, and while there are several enemy types, they are eventually repeated in stronger palette swapped versions in later levels. Beat 'em ups can be pretty repetitive by nature, but I am pleased to report that the enemy types are shuffled just enough that it didn't feel like I was doing the same thing over and over again. It didn't always feel FAIR, but we'll cover that next.

The Revengeance map screen.

I guess a whale isn't an insect...

Now I've mentioned that the game is significantly more difficult when you're playing solo, and there's actually a bit more to it than that. Once you start encountering the boss characters as normal enemies you'll realize that they always come in pairs and are near impossible to manage on your own. The AI seems to know to separate the two, and you'll often take hits whenever you're focusing your attack on one of them. This is mainly due to the fact that your attack combos seem to take place in an unbreakable string, or at least you're not able to cut them off fast enough to react to other threats. The hit boxes are actually a bit odd too, and you can add to that the fact that most of these boss enemies have a far longer reach than you. Fighting porcupines and squirrels will most likely cost you a life or two, and can totally change a run in or out of your favor depending on how you do during those types of encounters. Losing lives on enemies is one thing though, but there are a lot of stage hazards to deal with also. Various levels have things like exploding mushrooms, grass that completely conceals some enemies, cannons that shoot randomly from afar and can't be stopped, and lots of bottomless pits. Oh, and water because apparently none of these animals can survive a second after getting wet. Most of my deaths in my first playthroughs were falling into pits or water as jumping over them can be very tricky. You'll also be fighting near them a lot, and this means you can be knocked back into them as well. Of course you can also knock enemies into pits and water, but it's just so unfair that you can lose an entire continue's worth of lives in one bad platforming section.

The three characters all have stats, but I don't think they really affect all that much. Cheeks is supposed to be slower but stronger, but there were times I swore he was attacking as fast as Grey. Grey is supposed to be balanced, but I couldn't help but feel that he attacked slowest of all. Red attacks really fast, and is my favorite character by far, but they have the only true noticeable gameplay change by being the weakest: They pick up enemies slower. Yeah, besides basic combo attacks you can throw enemies, and usually this happens whether you want it to or not depending on how close you are to the enemy you're currently attacking. Enemies can throw you too, but you'll often hit and damage another enemy in your landing, so it's a mixed bag. Besides attacking and throwing, there are some special attacks that can be performed while dashing and jumping. I'll talk a bit about controls later on, but let's just say now that these moves are far too unreliable to use regularly. I often only performed them on accident when I was randomly button mashing to get out of an enemy's attack combo. There is a button dedicated to rolling, and ideally this would be used to avoid attacks, but I found it near useless unless dashing so I pretty much never used it. Besides that there's magic, but it doesn't seem to power up as much as you think it would with added levels. Red only gets two levels of magic, Grey four, and Red six, all of them use these magic levels to summon bugs that perform attacks that damage and knock down every enemy on screen. Like I said previously though, I didn't see a lot of difference between using Red's fully powered up magic versus Cheek's level two magic. Once you use any magic you lose all the levels and have to build them up again via mushrooms. This means that it's best just to use it as soon as you get it, even if that means "wasting" it on normal enemies.

I hate this tall grass. It's annoying.

That damn water.

Okay, I need to say something before we go further. I didn't really mention it yet, but this is a very retro-inspired game. I don't just mean that it takes gameplay elements from beat 'em ups of the past and applied them here, I mean that it borrows a lot from one particular game: Golden Axe. When I say it "borrow" I mean it takes just about everything from it. Every character and enemy in Chipmonk has a direct parallel in Golden Axe, and there are entire levels that are one-to-one recreations, right down to enemy and boss placement. Magic also works mostly the same, as do the way you replenish life and magic via flies as opposed to the gnomes found in Golden Axe. I remember thinking that the only thing that the game didn't steal was the way the levels progressed on a map screen that ended at the Big Bad's lair, but then I played Revengeance and realized that they had not only added that there, but they'd also used the few level layouts that weren't already in the Classic game. The only big difference I can note between the two is that there aren't any ridable creatures, but just about everything else is the same. I even went back to the original Golden Axe just to see if I was mistaken and noticed even more things to compare. I can go on like this but I think you get the point. It's so blatant that I can't imagine it was anything but deliberate. I still enjoyed my time with the game, and I have a lot more to say about it, but it definitely walks a fine line between inspiration and plagiarism. It's quite disappointing actually as there is a lot here that could've made it a totally unique game, but they went a totally different route instead.

Those squirrel knights are the worst.

Beware those ships!

I have mixed feelings on the graphics. Everything looks just a bit... off. Chipmonk's character and level design feels like it's trying to look retro, but somehow managed to fail in capturing the look. The character models are all just a bit too big, or maybe it's that the camera feels a bit zoomed in, it's something I can't put my finger on. With that said, I do like the character and enemy designs for the most part. It's just funny that they had a very clear inspiration for everything, but missed the boat when it came to visuals. I didn't really mention it above, in fact I just glanced over the fact that rodents and small animals are fighting each other, but there are definite Redwall vibes here. I couldn't help but feel that if the Redwall book series decided to put out a video game that it would look something like this. Some of the boss characters initially looked a little odd to me, until I realized that they were other rodent-like animals in full armor or clothes. That's just so Redwall-esque that I couldn't help but forgive a lot of the negative things about the game. There's a certain charm to all of this that I can't put into words, but it made me want to go easier on the graphics the more I played since I had so much Redwall on the brain. Now the same love isn't shared by the levels themselves. Just about everything in stages looks very plain and generic, as if was just cut and pasted into place from a stock library of background objects. Most annoyingly, there are foreground elements in a lot of levels that cover up as much as half the screen at times and make an already challenging experience straight out annoying. I have no idea why the developers thought this was a good idea, but it's something that you'll come across in just about every stage.

This is actually the main crew of the pirate ship.

Lawn chairs?

I don't want to be too harsh to this game, as it clearly is a small indie title, but Chipmonk has some of the worst music I've ever heard in a modern video game. There are a couple tracks that are just okay, mainly the boss theme and some tracks in the Revengeance mode, but many of the songs sound like they were created by someone looping a handful of notes and calling it a day. Several tracks, at least half of them, literally sound like someone with little to no music experience hit random keys until they found a melody that they could loop over and over again. And I'm using the term "melody" very loosely, some are so atonal that I was shocked that they'd think it was suitable for a released game. I don't want to dwell on the music too much, but I can't imagine anyone coming away from playing it for a few hours and thinking I'm wrong in my assessment. There's no voice acting in Chipmonk of course, but one of the most heard sound effects in the game is the death scream all the enemies do (Another thing shamelessly borrowed from Golden Axe by the way.), and it sounds so lo-fi that it could very well be the same sound distorted to hell and back. This actually goes for just about all the sound effects too. I'm not sure if they were going for a retro sound font feel, but it comes off like everything was recorded from a second generation 8-track tape.

Controls are actually not as bad as I thought they'd be when the game first started. The overly big characters, and the somewhat floaty movement, made me dread playing it for any length of time. You pretty much get used to all the little movement quirks quickly though, and most of them make sense within the context of the game. Some enemies have wonky hit boxes, and I swear that Cheeks has the worst attack range by far, but you'll figure out how to compensate for most it after a bit of trial and error. Not everything sorts itself out control-wise though. Dashing and rolling seem to only work when they want to, and you actually need to master dashing in order to get through the game without dying needlessly. See, the game has those random platforming sections I mentioned earlier, and all I can say is that it's here where I realized how broken most of the controls actually were. I'm not sure if it's a timing thing or what, but dashing only working one out of like four or five times is the biggest enemy you'll face in this game. You don't need it to attack, though a dash attack is quite strong, but you do need it to perform long jumps across bottomless pits or water. There were a couple times when the dash worked, only to surprise me after repeated failures and I'd fall into the pit/body of water I was trying to clear. Not that making it with the dash is guaranteed as jumping itself feels like you're moving through molasses as you suddenly slow down mid-air. The only reason these sections don't stop you in your tracks is that the game usually respawns you on the other side of the pit if you fail. It's almost as if the developers knew these sections were cheap and broken...​

This game even has Reggie in it!

A bit of my stats so far.

Chipmonk has a lot of fun to offer. It has several game modes, it's really fun in multiplayer, and if you're a fan of Redwall then you're probably going to find it as endearing as I did. It isn't without its frustrating bits though, and those make it hard to give a full recommendation. Also, that music might want to make one play it on silent after being forced to listen to it for any length of time. There is something else that really plays in Chipmonk's favor, and that's its price. You can pick up the game at a low MSRP of $9.99, and at that price I think the game is more than worth it. For that low price of entry I'd pick it up just for the sheer fun of it essentially being a furry reskin of Golden Axe. Sure there are better beat 'em ups out there, but how many let you play as a chipmunk? Surely that's worth something, at least it is to me. So yeah, consider picking it up on your console of choice and get to laying waste to the Grey Squirrel's minions!

Check out Chipmonk! On the Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/chipmonk-switch/

---

Story: C
Gameplay: C+
Graphics: B-
Music/Sound: D
Value: A

Overall: C

Pros:
+ Unique character and enemy designs make this one of the most unique beat 'em ups around.
+ Multiplayer is very fun and seems to be how the game is designed to be played.
+ Lots of replayability for a relatively small price tag.
+ The idea of rodents and small animals beating each other up is just a lot of fun.

+/- Has lots of Redwall vibes.

Cons:
- The music is just bad. Sound effects don't fare much better.
- Controls can be a hit or miss, especially when it comes to life-or-death platforming sections.
- Seems not quite balanced for a single player experience.
- Is a pretty much direct copy of the first Golden Axe game.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

---

Get used to this screen!