Older gamers might remember Id Software's 1992 first-person shooter Wolfenstein 3D, where players controlled Allied spy William "B.J." Blazkowicz as he fights his way out of the titular castle turned Nazi prison. At the time, the game was highly praised for its cutting-edge graphics and tight action gameplay. A newly-released fan game called Return to Castle Monkey Ball combines the classic first-person shooter with the action-arcade gameplay from Super Monkey Ball, Amusement Vision's 2001 game about monkies rolling around in plastic balls and completing obstacle courses. The resulting standalone fan game results in a wacky experience that quite a few people didn't know they needed.
Created by an itch.io user by the name of Nickireda, Return to Castle Monkey Ball has B.J. forgo his usual array of guns and instead rolls around the castle's halls inside the monkey ball. Players have a limited amount of time per level to navigate the stage and make their way to the exit. Along the way, they can collect bananas and various treasures to get more points so they can brag about how good they are at escaping prison camps while rolling around in a ball.
The halls of the castle are still crawling with enemies determined to keep B.J. from escaping. However, despite being about a third of the size of the average Nazi guard, B.J. can easily dispatch them by bumping into them, which adds more time to the clock. Players will have to navigate eight procedurally-generated levels before B.J. can go free and enjoy his bananas in peace.
Return to Castle Monkey Ball is a fan game that is free to play and can be found on itch.io. The game runs on HTML 5 and doesn't require any downloads
