Look, I love Steam as it provides a central platform to get PC games from a few bucks to full price, from retro titles to brand-new releases. I love Unity as a development platform as so many award-winning games have used the game creation tool. I love gorilla’s as they are majestic beasts that deserve our respect and protection.
So, it’s a shame that playing The Lonely Gorilla makes every one of those things I mentioned above look bad. It shows how much crap is sold on Steam, how anyone can click and few buttons and release a “game” using Unity, and how it makes you feel that gorillas should be allowed to die off so we don’t get games like this.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”14″]Dev: Funderground GamesType: Simulation
Release: Nov 16, 2018 [/perfectpullquote]
Add in the fact that The Lonely Gorilla barely works as a video games and you have the perfect storm of crap. A literal shit storm that makes you feel dirty for just having it installed on your PC. The game crashes, controls barely work, objectives are unclear and combat it done by clicking on-screen Xbox 360 buttons.
I make it my mission to find games on Steam that get overlooked by most people. A lot of the time I come across some fun titles that show the neat things developers can do with small teams and next to zero money. Sometimes you even find a hidden gem that deserves all the praise in the world and a push with a small review.
And sometimes, because this is Steam, you find complete crap that wouldn’t even get a passing grade in a beginners game development class. The Lonely Gorilla is one such title. I’m sure we’ve all played bad games before, especially on something like Steam Early Access. Even huge games can have a rough time and smaller games tend to die on the vine in Early Access without ever coming out.
Somehow The Lonely Gorilla is a complete game. What’s even worse is that it did have an Early Access period with some reviews from users saying the game was a complete nightmare. But there’s always the chance that a developer learns and takes in feedback to release a really solid title once out of Early Access.
And looking on the game’s Steam page you get clear hints that something isn’t right with the featured review the developer selected to promote the game simply saying the game was released. At least the discussions are active with the developer really involved, promising AI and other updates down the road. Still, you can only polish a turd so much. No matter how pretty you make it at its core it’s still a piece of poop.
As for the game itself The Lonely Gorilla bills itself as a survival simulator. This is actually the case, it just doesn’t work very well in most respects. You are dumped into the world and have to deal with health, hunger and finding/creating shelter. It’s barebones, sure, but your hunger meter drops faster than any survival game I’ve ever seen. It won’t take more than ten-minutes before you stave to death if you’re not careful.
Food can be collected from trees and eaten, or you can carry it in your hands with you for later use. And you’ll have to save food because some tasks require you to feed other gorilla’s to get them to join your troop. But since there is no map or indicator where these gorilla’s are you’ll want some food on you at all times, especially outside the plentiful starting area.
Combat is handled only when near another animal. You can taunt them in order to scare them off, or choose to battle them by clicking an on-screen button. Attacks are mapped onto on-screen Xbox 360 buttons which is a very weird feeling. You have to mouse-click a virtual gamepad to get one of e three attacks you have to initiate.
The Lonely Gorilla is a confusing mess that is made up of parts, pieces, and ideas from all over the place. Combat has a strange RPG system so that when you hit an animal a damage rating is given, but without an enemy health-bar or numerical counter, it means nothing outside of letting you know you hit something.
And I know this is a simulation of life as a gorilla, but I have a hard time believing that Coco here can fell an African Elephant in five strikes. And while there is combat, you won’t face any danger from any animal other that the tigers that want you dead. Kill and giant elephant and his friends will ignore you. The same goes for pretty much anything else.
Now, things are bad but nothing I’ve said puts The Lonely Gorilla into terrible territory. Where that happens is in the controls. Remember the original Resident Evil? Well, this game lifts the control and movements right from that PS1 classic. There’s no strafe here using WASD, rather you have to come to a complete stop to turn side to side. You know, like real gorilla’s in the wild.
You can sort of turn as you move, but this process is very slow and ineffective, especially when trying to deal with animals or picking up food. And when running it’s less simulation and more Initial D. The camera isn’t doing you any favors either as it’s third-person, but really wants to be isometric. This means you never really have a clear view on whats happening and want to move it around with your mouse. But this means you go into tank mode and you move in one direction and look in another. Again, like a real gorilla.
And then there’s the gamelpay that really doesn’t exist. You are tasked with completing a few tasks, all of which are permanently pasted to the screen. The core of the game is to find your troop and then do whatever gorillas do. This is nearly impossible as the game gives you no clues or ideas where they might be. You simply have to wander about “exploring” the world that looks like it’s been cut and pasted.
I never quite figured out how to get some gorillas to follow me. Sometimes they want you to feed them and sometimes they’ll just flail about with gigantic screens above them giving you all their stats like one of those digital billboards you see on the highway. It really takes you out of the who simulation thing to be sure.
Graphically, The Lonely Gorilla is the sort of game that makes the Unity engine look really, really, REALLY bad. The game looks worse than an early PS2 game and comes with a strange filter over everything as if someone has smeared Vaseline all over the screen. My eyes aren’t the best as is, so looking at the game gave me a headache, my eyes trying to focus on something.
The world that you explore in the game is pretty large –I think. You have no incentive to explore and can’t do anything in this world anyways. Everything looks exactly the same anyways, so you won’t want to. Chances are you’ll break the game simply looking for more of your friends. You can easily scale vertical cliff-faces by just simply walking as normal too. Nothing in this world can stop your gorilla power, not even the laws of physics!
The first time I played I broke the game by walking into the ocean. I figured I’d drown, because, you know, water in the lungs is bad on mammals. But I didn’t drown, I didn’t automatically die, in fact, nothing at all happened. An underwater filter showed up and I just kept walking until everything went white. I had to restart my game because I got lost in this great white nothing.
I’ve played some “so-bad-it’s-good” type of games and they can make for a few laughs with friends. The Lonely Gorilla is beyond the pail and just falls into terrible territory. Right from the outset everything scream “My first game,” from the cheap mobile-like main menu, the lack of intro, and just a basic lack of fun. There isn’t any part of this game that is fully developed.
I’m all for people creating games, I’ve created a few and released them to the public as well, but I never had the gall to charge real money for these tiny games that were just ways to help teach myself programming. And the team behind The Lonely Gorilla has some real balls to release this, even for the $5 it’s asking for on Steam.
This should have been a free release on the Google Play store at the very best. There is no way I can recommend this game in any way shape or form. The Lonely Gorilla is hands-down the worst game of 2018, and I know people will give me crap for saying that as it’s an indie game, but remember that something like Stardew Valley was an indie game created by one person and still pushed the entire industry forward.
If you are releasing a complete game and charging real money for it, I think that’s more than enough to put you in the running for making a “Worst Games” list. There is just no way this game was ready for a full release and it’s hard to find any pros when taking everything into account. Just stay away from The Lonely Gorilla.
Final Score:
1/5
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