This article was originally written for TheNintendoVillage.com, a website I founded and ran from 2018 to 2021.

Monkey Barrels, the top-down bullet-hell shooter from Yoshi’s Crafted World developer Good Feel, has just received its first update and the patch features a number of changes.

There’s been a bunch of tweaks to some of the game’s weapons, including reducing the price of them in the game’s ‘junk shop’, so players can expand their arsenal a little easier at the beginning of the game. There’s also been some changes to the difficulty, with adjustments to a number of bass battles and the durability of some enemies in the tank stages.

Happily, there’s been some general gameplay improvements across the board implemented too. There’s an improved frame rate in some previous problem areas, a few bugs have been squashed and there’s been improvement to the readability of a number of languages, English included. As this was something we noted was a problem in our review, we’re glad to see it’s been addressed in this update.

The full patch notes are as follows:

Improved frame rate

- Scrolling Shooter Stage “2-2”, “4-1” and “5-1”
- Stage “5-2”
- Bosses in Area-4
- Final Boss in Area-5

Difficulty level adjustment

Adjusted Bosses in Area-4
- Adjusted some attacks

Adjusted Boss-1 in Area-5
- Reduced the boss’s durability slightly
- Adjusted the boss’s movement pattern

Adjusted Boss-2 (Final Boss) in area-5
- Adjusted some attacks

Adjusted the enemy’s durability in the tank stage
- Reduced the durability of the enemy’s tanks
- Reduced the durability of the refrigerators

Adjusted player’s tank performance
- Increased the turret traverse speed
- Increased firearm rapid-fire speed

The weapons released in Area-1 reduced the price by 100 JUNK

- Paparazzo FM “Beginner”
- Rocket Can Green “Beginner”
- Assaultea Milk “Balanced”
- Gas Dryer Set “Speed”
- V8 Regular “Beginner”
- Oil Sniper Marinade “Beginner”
- Popgun Melon “Power”
- Café Gun Sweetened “Speed”
- Potato Gun Basil “Balanced”
- Copter Barrier Green “Beginner”
- Firewall Access Denied “Beginner”
- Barrier Board Safety First “Beginner”
- Theaturret

Weapon Adjustment

Popgun Melon “Power”
- Increased rapid-fire speed

Sauce Laser Ketchup “Arsenal”
- Increased damage

Sakura-39 Journey “Power”
- Increased rapid-fire speed

Hydro-1000 Red “Beginner”
- Increased move speed

Hydro-1000 Yellow “Power”
- Increased move speed
- Increased damage

UI Adjustment

Improved the readability of the following languages:

- English
- Spanish
- French
- German
- Portuguese
- Russian
- Korean
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Chinese (Simplified)

Bug fixes

- Fixed other bugs

Have you been having fun with Monkey Barrels? Let us know down in the comments.

Source: Japanese Nintendo