It’s time for some classic point-and-click adventuring in the form of Monolith. It’s made by the German team Animation Arts that in the past has created games such as Secret Files: Tunguska (which I have reviewed here on the site). Now the question is, does the team still have it in them to produce something truly special? Well, I’m happy to say, they absolutely do. While I didn’t find Monolith as humorous and exciting as Secret Files, it’s still a nice addition to the point-and-click adventure genre that probably won’t disappoint if you enjoy these types of games.
Planet mysterious
You play as Tessa Carter, an explorer onboard the spaceship TAC-92. When approaching an unknown planet the ship manages to hit a space rock floating around in orbit of the planet. The ship spirals out of control and is forced to make a crash landing on this mysterious and barren planet. When Tessa finally wakes up from her cryo sleep, she immediately recognizes that something is wrong. The interior is smoking, and the tubing which holds the cooling has been smashed open. Another pressing matter is that her technician and friend Mark is nowhere to be found. This prompts the start of this cozy adventure that will take you through an alien world to find out what happened to you and Mark and to somehow establish a call for help into the great black void that is space.
It’s a pretty intriguing plot setup, and while it sounds like you will be alone for the majority of the story – this isn’t so. Soon you will find a little robot friend that will help you out on your journey. The characters are for the most part well-written, but there aren’t too many of them to get to know that are of importance, besides Tessa, and CORE (the robot). I would say that Tessa is well-realized, as she actually has an arc and a personality. However, the robot comes off as a bit bland. I usually like robot/AI companions in sci-fi stories (like Portal 2). In the case of Monolith, his “humanity” and humor don’t come through as they should – and well, his AI-generated voice didn’t help much with this aspect either.
What is interesting about the narrative (without trying to spoil anything) is that the mystery is gripping from the start, but you will quickly notice a few oddities that don’t make complete sense. This feeling lasts throughout Monolith, and when you reach the middle of the game, this feeling will be the strongest – in other words: at this point in the story, I got majorly invested and curious about where this tale would take me. I had my ideas, but I didn’t expect the story to take the turn it did. In a sense it became mundane, but at the same time very dramatic as it transformed into something much deeper than I was expecting. In the end, it’s a story about regret, self-fulfillment, sacrifice, family, loss and happiness. It will probably not work for everyone, and I would say it had about a 70 percent success rate on me (if you can measure it). The remaining 30 percent was hoping it would remain true to the theme it set out at the beginning.
Lots of clicking
The gameplay consists of the usual when it comes to this genre. You will be clicking, walking, picking up a lot of stuff, and combining all this stuff to finally solve all the game’s puzzles. Nothing new here, but I have to say, Monolith wasn’t too hard or had too obscure solutions. For the most part, the pacing remained fairly high. I only got stumped two times. One was a numbers obstacle and my mind just refused to figure this problem out, and another was an alloy enigma, which required you to use math to figure out the amount of metal you needed to melt to form a replacement item. What is nice is that the game has an in-game option for skipping these challenges. I highly recommend trying to solve every puzzle because of the satisfaction of doing so, yet, it’s a very sympathetic option to have when you have taken your brain as far as you possibly could. Monolith has a good ratio between story, dialogue, reading, and puzzles overall, which made it a joy, and a quite fast experience to complete – lasting under ten hours. This shouldn’t be of any concern because of the shorter length, it has a minimum of padding, and unnecessary scenes – a pleasant surprise for a genre that otherwise can feel pretty lengthy, and not in a good way always.
Visuals & sound
The painted backgrounds look good and are very lovely to observe for the eyes. The backdrops also set the mood and atmosphere quite well, and they are easy to make out to understand what is what. However, the 3D models used for people are a bit of a hit or miss. They are not bad, but they don’t mesh that well with the painted environments. Animations, both in-game and in the pre-rendered cutscenes can feel a little off, yet, it isn’t something that ruins Monolith in any way. There is a clear quality difference between the two though.
The voice acting is quite good for the most part, but when Tessa is supposed to raise her voice, the recordings used aren’t that great, and often they spike with a sound distortion that will hurt your ears. Not so great perhaps. However, she will talk in a normal tone most of the game, so it’s a minor issue. The music was fine too. It didn’t make any kind of lasting impression on me, but what was there worked for the setting. The looping is pretty noticeable at times, as music or background ambiance will suddenly cut out and start again. Sometimes this switches abruptly between scenes too. Weird, but not too overly annoying. It does drop the presentation quality.
In conclusion
Monolith is a fine adventure game, and it’s great to see Animation Arts still doing their thing. However, I wouldn’t call the game a remarkable piece of entertainment or anything like that. But for what is it, it’s good, and if you are ever in the mood for a new click-and-point adventure game Monolith will not fail you. The main thing Monolith has going for it is that its story is complete and works plot-wise – so you don’t have to worry about being left in the dark or being disappointed in that remark. The story, however, might not work for you, depending on what you expect, but as said, it’s final at least. Recommended!
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
Tom's Gaming Blog 