Walkthroughs

Boonk Gang tips and tricks - how to improve your cash flow

So you can buy milkshakes

Boonk Gang tips and tricks - how to improve your cash flow
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| Boonk Gang

Boonk Gang: The Video Game is a high score-chasing dodge-'em-up starring the eponymous social media star-slash-rapper. Players guide Boonk as he picks up money left behind by passersby while avoiding pursuing cops and "The Man."

Despite the simplicity of the gameplay, which takes place on a single screen and uses only two buttons, earning a high score is a bit more complex. Our tips below cover the basics of the game as well as tactics for collecting fat stacks.

The basics

The "tutorial" for Boonk Gang tells you to hold left to turn left and right to turn right, and that's about it. The actual goal of the game is to pick up the dollars lying around the street to earn as high a score as possible. Each dollar you pick up—whether it's a single bill worth $1 or a stack worth $3—will add one point to your score counter.

While wandering, you need to avoid running into any of the policemen in blue or the patrolling group of people including "The Man." Hitting either of these will result in an instant game over.

The control scheme is intentionally awkward, and it's what makes picking up the dollars challenging. Although you can hold your finger down on one side to turn quickly, for the most part you should be tapping lightly and letting go. Just tap to adjust Boonk's direction and then let him run where you turn him instead of holding for long periods of time.

The power-ups

As you earn points, power-ups will randomly spawn around the screen. While they have slightly different effects, most of these items serve to make you invincible for a short period of time.

The gun provides a shield that stops all enemies and protects you if you run into them. However, be careful: the shield "effect" remains visible for a second after it's actually dispersed, and during this time you can die.

The cop hat disguises you and lets you run freely into anyone without dying. (Essentially just invincibility again.)

The lightning bolt makes you run extremely fast and also turns you invincible. Although this can be useful for snagging dollars across the map quickly, it's hard to control Boonk at this speed.

The bullhorn blasts away everyone else currently on screen when you collect it, opening up the center area. It also provides temporary invincibility against the enemies that were knocked back, but there's no way to tell when this goes away, so it's best to still avoid dangers after using the bullhorn.

Power-ups remain on-screen until you pick them up, so don't rush to a power-up if it's surrounded by hazards. Wait until it's safe—and ideally when there are lots of dollars scattered about—and then walk over to it.

The tips

First and foremost: play in landscape mode. It's a bit ugly, with cloud wallpaper filling the extra space and the end game screen buttons overlapping each other, but it makes all the difference. It allows you to place your fingers on the sides and not block the actual gameplay when tapping. This view also zooms out slightly, showing you more of the play area: in portrait, there's a lot more "off screen" space.

Whichever mode you play in, use the sides of the screen to your advantage. The screen wraps around like in PAC-MAN, so going off the top of the screen will make Boonk reappear at the bottom, going right sends him to the left, etc.

If you're playing in portrait, there's quite a bit of horizontal space on either side, so going left or right takes about a second. Enemies will never chase you off screen: once they hit the edge, they'll turn. You can turn around while off screen, so you can head out to dodge someone and then turn around and reemerge where you just were.

Cops warn of their presence by shouting "Five-Oh!" You can see the edge of this dialogue even before they arrive onscreen, so you know where newly spawning cops will appear.

You can always safely run into pedestrians. Those passersby with yellow circles beneath them will drop a dollar bill when you first run into them, but afterward they remain onscreen as neutral wanderers. You'll push pedestrians when running into them, so timed right, you can use them as a human shield between Boonk and other dangers.

As with power-ups, dollars don't disappear once spawned, so take your time getting to them. Don't rush into a group of policemen to snag some dollars: wait until there's an opening—or you have a power-up—and then head in. It's easiest to grab everything at once with a single power-up than to keep riskily dipping in to pick up one bill at a time.

Jillian Werner
Jillian Werner
When not hunting down food in buffet- or waffle-form, Jillian loves to play puzzle, adventure, and cat games. Yes, she insists "cat" is a legitimate genre.