Monospaced Lovers Steam Charts & Stats

[h1]Monoscaped Lovers[/h1] [h1] 8/10 [/h1] [h3] The Space between Zelda-inspired and Metroidvania-inspired [/h3] [h2] Story, Art and Music [/h2] The story is consistently engaging and features a delightful cast of characters, there was never a moment when I didn’t enjoy the writing in their interactions. I’d say the overall vibe of the story could be summed up as Firewatch meets Undertale and Celeste. The hand-drawn art looks great and it’s well-animated. The soundtrack is also quite nice, leaning towards a calmer vibe overall, even when what's happening on screen is pure hell, there are a few songs that really stuck with me. [h2] Metroidvania-lite [/h2] The story progression is fairly linear on paper, though the game doesn’t tell the player where to go next, giving you some freedom to figure out how to advance the main story. On top of that, it counts with non-linear exploration for side content. Its map is smaller and more compact, with an area at the center of the world that connects to the others, offering around 5 areas with some degree of interconnectivity. Unlike other games, the collectibles aren’t player upgrades; instead, they provide story content and cosmetic items while all the metroidvania-like upgrades are tied to story progression. It’s really a game where exploration is driven by a “childlike sense of discovery”. [h2] Gameplay, Difficulty and Accessibility options [/h2] Overall, it’s a pretty challenging game. The main story puzzles are challenging without being too cryptic, and the platforming feels very puzzle-like, requiring a fair amount of precision. Honestly, those aspects of the game were never really that hard in my opinion… Then you have the bullet hell combat against bosses. It was fairly manageable on hard difficulty until the bosses got noticeably harder in the second half of the game. I don’t have much experience with bullet hell games, but I managed to beat Rabi-Ribi (a bullet hell metroidvania) just by being persistent. However, for this one, I ended up lowering the difficulty. The game offers accessibility options for both puzzles and platforming. It also lets you fight bosses on an easier difficulty and includes a practice mode for their different phases. [h2] Things I didn’t quite like [/h2] [list] [*]I was never a fan of the health system for the bosses. On hard difficulty, you’re forced to survive the bosses’ special moves without taking any damage. If you fail, you’re sent back to the start of the phase, which makes your health points feel almost pointless at times. [*]Some puzzles require specific knowledge, like binary code, piano keys, and zodiac symbols. While the game makes it clear what you are expected to do, it can still be a bit frustrating to have to Google certain information. One of the first main story puzzles uses binary, which might leave a bad first impression in some people, but thankfully, the rest of the main content is much lighter on these kinds of puzzles. [*]I think chapter 3 had too many piano puzzles, I'm not a big fan of them. I also didn’t like having to wait for the effects of the teas to wear off, that was also a little bit annoying, specially when one of them feel like was trying to give me a seizure or something XD [*]Some effects for the chips' texts were slightly annoying, I like to take my time when reading. [/list] [h2] Conclusion [/h2] Overall, this was a memorable experience that I thoroughly enjoyed for most of the 30 hours it took me to finish(missing half of the chips). It’s definitely challenging and somewhat niche, but absolutely worth experiencing for its good and relatable writing, childlike sense of exploration, and intense bullet hell challenges.