Bloons Super Monkey (Bloons Supermonkey on MochiGames) is a vertically scrolling arcade shooter game in the Bloons franchise. It is a spin-off of Bloons Tower Defense[1] and the first game in the Bloons Supermonkey series. The player controls Super Monkey to pop formations of Bloons across 15 levels called "waves" that gradually increase in Bloon count as the player progresses. Bloons drop Power Blops when popped that can be spent on upgrades to improve Super Monkey's firepower. The player is required to pop enough Bloons to earn at least a bronze trophy on each wave, otherwise the game ends in a game over, but the player can pop more Bloons and earn silver or gold trophies to improve their score. The player wins by progressing through all 15 waves and popping the final boss, the BFB.
The original version of Bloons Super Monkey is an Adobe Flash game developed by Ninja Kiwi and released in February 2010. This game received a port to iOS under the same name, which was developed by Digital Goldfish and released in August 2010.
The player controls Super Monkey by moving their mouse. Super Monkey attacks automatically, so the player can only move him to aim at Bloons and collect Power Blops and powerups that drop from popped Bloons. Super Monkey's default attack fires darts straight ahead every 2.67 seconds, each of which can pop up to two Bloons, but he can be upgraded to add more attacks, enhance existing attacks, or replace attacks. The player can spend Power Blops on upgrades on the pause screen, opened at the end of each wave or by pressing Escape. There are 24 upgrades in total, split into three upgrade paths and eight upgrade tiers.
This game is split into five stages with different themes, each with three levels called "waves", for a total of 15 levels. On each wave, Bloons move across the screen in different formations and patterns, and the player has a limited amount of time to pop them before they go off-screen and disappear. There is a target number of pops that the player must reach in order to complete the wave and progress to the next wave, otherwise the player gets a game over. The game also ends if the player allows a MOAB-Class Bloon to escape. As the game progresses, the number of Bloons and target pops of each wave increases. Each stage has a different scrolling speed, which affects the background scrolling speed and the "gravity" of Power Blops as they fall from popped Bloons.
Regular Bloons come in different layers, ranging from Red Bloons that are popped in only one hit, to Rainbow Bloons that have six layers, to Ceramic Bloons that have multiple hit points and layers. These Bloons only drop blops when all layers are popped, and can sometimes drop "super powerups" that trigger an effect when collected. There are two types of MOAB-Class Bloons, which do not have layers, instead spawning one Red Bloon per point of damage taken and spawning 80 Red Bloons, 20 Yellow Bloons, and 100 Power Blops when popped.
Score
The ending screen with the final score tally
The player earns one point for each Bloon layer popped. At the end of each wave, except the final wave, the player can earn a bronze, silver, or gold trophy depending on which pop targets they reached, which increases the player's score for that wave by 10%, 20%, or 50%, respectively. At the end of the game, regardless of if the player won or lost, the final score is the total wave score plus a "blop bonus", which is the total number of Power Blops collected times 2.
Deals 10 damage to all Bloons on-screen, instantly destroying everything below a Ceramic Bloon.
Freeze Out
35%
Freezes all Bloons and Power Blops on-screen and stops the current wave from progressing for 3.2 seconds. Super Monkey is unaffected.
Sun God
15%
Transforms Super Monkey into a Sun God for 5 seconds. During the transformation, Super Monkey's attacks are replaced with a new attack that rapidly fires five sun beams at once, each having high damage and pierce.
Twin Darts is supposed to reduce the dart attack's attack speed by 25%, and Extra Speed is supposed to restore its attack speed back to the rate of Faster Darts. However, due to a programming error, Twin Darts does not lower its attack speed, and Extra Speed has no effect whatsoever.[fn 1]
Some upgrade names are too long to fit in their allocated text space, which causes the game to cut off their full names.
Triple Twin is supposed to be named "Triple Twin Lasers".
Twin Super is supposed to be named "Twin Super Plasma".
Triple Super is supposed to be named "Triple Super Plasma".
Quad Super is supposed to be named "Quad Super Plasma".
Development
Bloons Super Monkey was heavily inspired by Raiden, a shooter arcade game that released in April 1990. Designing a shooter game without any violence was a challenge for the developers.[1]
Unused content
Super Monkey has an unused health stat and an unused MAX_HEALTH value of 50.
The wave text at the start of each wave supports wave numbers as high as ten, but in the final game, only wave numbers one, two, and three are used.
Descriptions
Ninja Kiwi / MochiGames / Kongregate
“
Take control of Super Monkey as he embarks on a Bloon popping frenzy through 5 stages and 15 waves. Collect and use Power Blops to upgrade Super Monkey in three different skill paths. Watch out for super powerups and make sure you score at least Bronze in each wave to advance to the next. Good luck!
”
MochiGames instructions
“
Move mouse to control Super Monkey, hit ESC to bring up upgrades screen and to pause the game.
Super Monkey fires non-stop automatically - after all, he is Super Powerful.
”
Kongregate instructions
“
Control Super Monkey with the mouse. Hit ESC at any time during a wave to access the upgrades screen.
”
Newgrounds
“
We thought it would be cool to make a RaidenX style game using a balloon popping game play mechanic. Also, people love the super monkey and we wondered what he'd get up to when he wasn't playing BTD4.
It was originally going to be a tiny little project to keep us busy for a week or so but it ended up being quite epic. I love the leve design - it gets really intense.
↑More specifically, the code that controls the dart attack's rate of fire is missing a break statement in a switch statement, which causes a fallthough.
Title screen
Pause screen
Ending
Game over
Super Monkey on the title screen
Super Monkey in the ending
Bronze trophy
Silver trophy
Gold trophy
Ninja Kiwi
MochiGames
Newgrounds
