The Good, the Bad and the Cheesy

Adventure games are a capricious bunch. They can easily help pass the hours with complex and challenging puzzles, and suck players into a wonderful world rich in history and characters. Another type of adventure game tugs at your heartstrings with nostalgia for favorite movies and older games. Still others transport players to a time when it was perfectly okay to have puzzles that required soaking in the game manual in order to make progress. Luckily, games nowadays don’t go make players go that far.

Indie games are making a huge reappearance, as are game genres that were thought to have fallen by the wayside. Randal’s Monday is more than happy to make a case that point-and-click adventure games can still be relevant, but its journey to bring back the “good ol’ days” has unearthed some aspects that should have stayed buried.

Who Doesn’t Hate Mondays?

The Randal’s Monday storyline is unique and quite funny: Randal, a hedonistic jokester with kleptomaniacal tendencies, steals his best friend’s engagement ring after a long night of drinking. This ring isn’t just the kind that precedes the bonds of matrimony; this ring has qualities that everyone wishes to have for his own. Unfortunately, the ring might also be evil, but that’s something to be determined.

Despite the ring beckoning him, Randal decides to sell it in order to pay his past-due rent. A buyer at the local resale shop offers an exorbitant amount of money and Randall jumps on the deal. From there, it seems like a slam-dunk day for Randal, but when he falls asleep and wakes up the next day (greeted by a familiar tune that movie fans will catch), he discovers it’s still Monday. However, it’s a different Monday. This is where the storyline takes off into the interesting concept of time travel.

Unfortunately, the early part of Randal’s Monday is the best part. The early puzzles, characters, situations and settings are fun and witty. Sadly, as the Mondays progress, the challenge of the puzzles ramps up to insane levels and the dialogue starts to wear out its welcome. Let’s start with the good, though, because there are some great qualities to be found in Randal’s Monday.

The Good

Randal’s Monday is quite full of little details that gamers and movie fans will enjoy. It also has situational jokes, and more. This is enough to populate a scene to the point of hilarity.

From the orgy of evidence in Randal’s apartment, it’s apparent that he’s a nerd in many respects. The settings belonging to his friends and enemies are also well-designed to show off their own brands of character.

Further, the game’s graphical quality is well-done using a bright and realistic color palette. Animation of characters with whom Randal interacts is detailed. Nearly everything in the background can be searched and talked about by Randal, providing an extensive wealth of information. Unfortunately, most of this offers no help with the game’s puzzles.

The voice acting ranges from okay to pretty good, with Randal voiced by Clerks star Jeff Anderson, whose character in that movie is also named Randal. Anderson seems to want to be the same character in Randal’s Monday, but comes up short. Jason Mewes also shows up as one-half of the famous duo Jay and Silent Bob. Obviously, Silent Bob does not talk, but Mewes does put some comedic effort into his character’s delivery. Other characters you’ll meet (my favorite is the Darth Vader wannabe) will definitely have some personality to them and be fully voiced, which is a nice touch.

Interaction can be done via a one-click or two-click option, which is a great choice. This should appeal to fans of both newer adventure games and older classics. The game’s many locations yield the impression of an expansive area in which to solve puzzles and meet characters, but this eventually becomes an issue.

As mentioned before, the earlier puzzles are a good amount of fun to figure out and solve, and they fit well with the story. As for the story itself, its premise offers a lot of “oh, how cool” moments due to time travel situations, and fans of Groundhog Day will appreciate how much Randal relates to it.

The Bad

Unfortunately, for an adventure game with puzzles and loading screens that say to “Use Logic” to solve them, the puzzles themselves take the game to a sour place. Logic goes right out the window when solutions to some of the puzzles start requiring incredible stretches of common sense.

I knew the game would be trouble when I decided to try out its hint system for some assistance with a puzzle. I pressed on after learning a kitten would be sacrificed and received practically step-by-step directions on how to solve the puzzle. I would have expected perhaps more clues or ways to motivate my problem-solving brain, but it appears that the game doesn’t know what sort of logic to use on itself and goes right for giving the player the answer.

It doesn’t help that accessing the inventory is a bit of a drag and that it takes some time to combine or investigate objects. There are also a few small bugs involving inventory that lead to the game becoming completely unresponsive, so save often.

As the multiple Mondays wear on, with more than one location required to solve a puzzle or a trip to the depths of insanity needed to figure out a solution, the headaches rise. And if illogical puzzles aren’t bad enough, the characters around Randal and even Randal himself would rather make jokes and quip one-liners than offer up any advice. It’s as if Randal is inconvenienced by being in a game controlled by a player who’s intent on solving his (Randal’s) problems.

The Cheesy

Overall, Randal’s Monday is cheesy. The voice acting is good; the art style fits perfectly and is well-animated. The background art definitely evokes some good nostalgia for fans of all sorts of genres. Sadly, the puzzles drag the game down to the point where a player might simply walk away.

If you manage to make it through the puzzles, you’ll be rewarded with a fun storyline. But the cost will be high: your sanity.

+ Good art and voice acting + Lots of nostalgia to check out – Puzzles ramp up in difficulty too quickly and become extremely convoluted – Unhelpful dialogue – Inventory accessibility is rough