They say if you give a monkey an infinite amount of time to randomly hit keys on a typewriter it will almost surely write Shakespeare’s complete works, word for word. But what happens when you give three monkeys with restricted access to their senses a limited amount of time to defuse a bomb? It explodes, the bomb almost always explodes.
This is the terrifying reality you must face in Bombanana, the new co-op bomb disposal game where you and three friends play as monkeys. The monkey part is fun, but not as crucial to the set up as the fact that one of you can’t see, one can’t hear, and one can’t speak; that really throws a spanner in the works. It’s like Team 3, the co-op building game which is also based on the three wise monkeys.
I rounded up some friends and started as the monkey who can’t see, who also happens to be the monkey that has to defuse the bomb. It’s as tricky as you’d expect.
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None of us had any clue what was going on or how to communicate with one another. The person who had the instruction manual couldn’t speak, the only person who could see what they were doing couldn’t hear instructions or questions, and I couldn’t see what the hell was going on—plus I’m pretty bad under pressure. In the end we just sat back, threw bananas at each other, and waited for the bomb to put us all out of our misery so we could regroup, strategise, and try again.
We soon came up with a vague strategy. The middle monkey, who could see but not hear, would work through what they could see of the internal mechanics of the bomb, detailing every single thing they saw so the monkey with the manual could flick through and understand what we were doing.
Then they’d focus on certain components inside the bomb, such as four switches, and ask the right questions like, “The first switch is red, should it be up or down?” And wait for the monkey with the manual to break their neck looking at the ceiling or just stare at the floor until they get the message. The middle monkey would then verbalise the information to the blind monkey who then hopefully did the right thing.
The trouble is that it gets much harder as you progress through the levels. With each level comes an additional puzzle to solve, more distractions, and even a finicky little gauge which gradually slides upwards and will trigger an immediate explosion if you fail to push it down.
I’d love to say that by the end we were acing every single bomb defusal. Perhaps the rest of my team could have done it without me, but my brain tends to go blank under pressure, so I probably shouldn’t have ended up with the instruction manual after my stint as the blind bomb defusal monkey. Still, Bombanana was still a hell of a lot of fun and facilitates the kind of chaos which I love from these kinds of co-op games, so even if we all ended up slightly singed, I’d count that as a win.
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