The does-not-take-self-seriously tone of the game is so delightful.
Does the brick do anything? At first I thought it made the Monkey run in the opposite direction when you hit it, but that might have been a coincidence because I couldn't seem to make it happen again.
This is a really awesome basis of a system. Might be cool to add more items that give you more control in the weirdest ways. It's almost like making everything feel like a chess pieces that cause interesting behaviors. Like a knight moves in L shapes, there could be items that redirect monkeys in interesting ways depending on what you hit them with. And also like how there's a thought that different items affect different entities differently. Lots of opportunity here!