Title: Randal’s Monday
Genre: Adventure, Indie
Developer: Nexus Game Studios
Publisher: Daedalic Entertainment
Release Date: 12 Nov, 2014
Price: $25
Platform: PC
[divider]Intro
Randal’s Monday is a humorous point and click adventure game. The first opening scene, as you start a new game, warns you that you are about to enter a dimension inhabited by geeks and nerds. This twilight zone style intro sets the stage for a game that is chock full of references to many geek culture phenomena picked up from numerous video games and iconic movies. It boldly calls its main protagonist a kleptomaniac, a sociopath and a horrible friend. You follow the storyline as the protagonist Randal seems to be stuck in a space-time loop as he keeps reliving the happenings of an eventful Monday.
On paper this looks like a wonderful combination and a fun adventure. It has good voice acting and funny exchanges throughout but the gameplay and puzzles are just not fun. The puzzles induce frustration and the hint system makes the rather vertiginous difficulty pointless.
[divider]Story
The story is tied following a “precious” ring Randal’s friend gets for his fiancé at a bargain. This ring however is said to be cursed. After coming in contact with the ring. Randal is stuck reliving the same Monday over and over again as he is affected by the curse of the ring. However his activities on each Monday affects the world around him and the next morning when he wakes up, the world and its history changes to accommodate the same. From ruining well known movie franchises to controlling the life and death of his best friend, there are some major repercussions to his activities. Somehow only Randal and a homeless man seems to notice how the timeline seems to alter as rest of the world seems unwise to this strange phenomenon. While the story is setup nicely, it is an on rails experience. You do not have any control over the outcome, even though there are many dialogue choices, as they are mostly superficial and do not have any impact on the storyline.
It’s a good story with many plot twists and periodically introduces a few interesting characters amongst other very generic clichés such as the angry boss and overly suspicious detective. You follow a love-hate relationship with the main character; Randal, based on how lazy and unattached he is at times while at other times you may find him relatable. It’s light-hearted in places it wants to be and cold, emotionless and disconnected in others. It did make me curious enough to keep on continuing to see what randomness and wierd events the story would throw up next. The conversations are genuinely interesting and full of insults, culture references and charm alike, sometimes even breaking the 4th wall. This style may come off as rude to some, but others will appreciate the coarse exchange. There are a lot of teenage tropes to be found and they give a chuckle every once in a while, especially when you get a reference you like. (Like my favorite: sssssmokin from The Mask.)
[divider]Visuals & Audio
Randal’s Monday has a cartoon style layout with thick outlines. The environment and objects have perspective distortion in the art style, where things seems to have a pincushion (corners of squares form elongated points) or barrel effect (straight lines bulge outwards at the center). All in all, it feels like a cartoon show but is mature enough to make sure that adults are entertained. In fact the game would not be recommended for kids. The design is neat and clean with the objects well distinguished to make sure that you can easily identify and select objects either with a gamepad or a mouse. For some reason, the gamepad would refuse to work on the subway map screen so I was forced to switch over to the keyboard, which I found was the better interface.
The game is fully voiced and the voice acting is well done. The game’s cartoony vibe is conveyed aptly in the narration and the kookiness of the dialogue which is funny for the most part, with much dark humor and situational jokes. It was wonderful to see how the dialogue between Randal and the bartender changed and by the end almost reversed roles as the game progressed and her looks changed. The music is minimalistic and apart from the main theme, unnoticeable. However, the short loopy tracks are apt for the dialogue heavy game as the voice action is always very clear and audible.
[divider]Gameplay
Soon after starting you will find an open ended world to explore using the subway which acts as a fast travel system. You will often need to travel between locations collecting items and it helps that there are no load times and you can even skip the walking animation by just double-clicking at the relevant entrances and exits for a room. The first impressions are great and things start off simple enough.
Most of the gameplay involves tricks to find a ring you sold off, unaware of its powers and finding a cure for the time loop you are stuck in. This involves escaping rooms, stealing supplies, bartering items at a pawn shop, breaking into apartments and rescheduling a sci-fi convention to name a few; all while trying not to get fired and/or get anyone killed. Most of these scenarios will have you solve some puzzles involving finding keys, combining items to get the appropriate tools to unlock paths and fixing broken items or creating distractions. This is where the isdues with the game start as the logic of these puzzles is nearly impossible to decipher. They do not follow any common sense and do not give off enough gameplay context to even be relevant. For example, You have to figure out that in order to distract a shopkeeper you have to create a cannon of the clock using steam and the gas tank beside it; all besides the said shopkeeper. The games tells you to use logic, but after half an hour of helplessly clicking on all items in the open world map, you go to the hints and a rather bizarre solution is presented. Soon I realised that the game is only beatable (at least in the first play through) using the hints menu which is very conveniently placed along with the inventory screen. The biggest problem with the puzzles is that there is no kind of context to even nudge you in the right direction. Most games would tell you that, for example, you can distract the guard using item x which is nearby, here Randal tells you the item is old and junk if you observe it. This guide system is just a gated walkthrough which does not offer a hint based on where you are stuck, but rather unlocks a line by line walkthrough as you click the hint button. This is a terrible hint system, however it strangely seems fitting for the game as it goes with the bad puzzles system. It seems the solutions had to be humourous rather than logical and does fit the cartoony theme of the game.
Randal’s Monday does not rely on its puzzles, but rather the ridiculousness of its story and quirky characters, which there are plenty of. Again, despite all this I did not find the game frustrating because by the 3rd of the 7 days, I gave up completely on solving the puzzles and played through for the story. It took me about 14 hours even with liberal use of the hints system, so there is more than enough gameplay. There is some replayability if you want to try again without the use of the hints, unlocking achievements for the same, and given the fact that all dialogue is skippable, it makes it real easy to just go through it if you start to feel bored or want to feel like you’re stuck in your own time loop.
[divider]What’s ill
+Stylized Cartoony art style
+Good voice acting
+Interesting story and thematic world
+Open world exploration with fast travel
What’s not
-Ridiculously impractical solutions
-No in game context or narration for puzzles’ hints
