Holy Bananas!

Overview

You’re a monkey. Take a guess.

That’s right, you’re a monkey running rapidly through the ruins of an ancient temple, searching for Holy Bananas to offer up to the Monkey God, Stanley. But there are several other monkeys in the ruins, each belonging to a rival group. You must race and fight them to collect the most Holy Bananas, making your offering to Stanley the greatest!

Disclaimer: No monkeys were injured during the creation of this game. Please keep it that way when playing with your friends because, let’s face it, we’re all just glorified monkeys here.

Development

Holy Bananas! was designed by Super Contribution, a team of first-year games students at Swinburne University. The assignment it was created for was meant to just be a game pitch, but we decided to develop a prototype for it as well. As such, I helped work on its design, research ideas for it, and prototype it. My work on Holy Bananas! contributed to me earning a High Distinction in the Introduction to Game Studies unit Holy Bananas! was designed for.

The game is intended to be light-hearted and focus on the social aspect of the gameplay to create humorous interactions. Its gameplay was inspired by tile-based games like Tsuro, Carcassone and Labyrinth, as well as Armello, which inspired our dice-based Monkey Fights, and trading card games like Magic: The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh!, which inspired the cards’ layouts and some of their mechanics.

Download on Itch.io

Details

Development: March 2017 – June 2017

Made For: Swinburne University (GAM10001 Introduction to Game Studies)

Game Genres: Board Game, Tile Game

Narrative Genres: Absurdist, Comedy

Credits

Our thanks to our tutor Melissa Rogerson for her professional input and feedback.