[4] Rock Paper Shotgun appreciated the joy of "gazing on your environment with the knowledge that it can be linguistically reshaped" and that puzzles had multiple solutions thus making success feeling personalized, ending the review with "With over eight hours of delicious wordplay, Counterfeit Monkey is a powerful start to interactive fiction in 2013.".
They wrote about it that "Counterfeit Monkey [is] a delight, displacing the age-old 'guess the verb' mentality and challenging you to excise your inventory to perfect noun", and appreciated the ease of navigation and the conversation system.
[3] They wrote further that "Beyond the novelty of language, the game resonates with its setting and story, a mixture of Orwell and Steampunk, but not quite either, with a dash of modern allusions making this crazy world seam real.
"[3] Of the design they wrote "while the game doesn't sport polygons or physics, it's a complex piece of code".
"[1]: 14m50s Kelly said the game succeeded in striking a balance with the massive city where the player never felt lost and that the huge inventory did not feel overwhelming.