Randal’s Monday, A groundhogs day Adventure game set after a night out celebrating your friend’s engagement. Developed by Daedalic Entertainment, the company to bring us The Dark Eye and the Deponia series of Adventure games, Randal’s Monday goes into a new direction in comparison to their previous works. Is the game worth a purchase, or will it leave you feeling Déjà vu? Or is the game worth a purchase?
Story
The game starts off with a weird segment, similar to The Twilight Zone or something like a bad 80’s Sci-fi as it details a weird world. The narration then Segway’s into the real game world, as it details the main protagonist as the kleptomaniac that he, and many other Adventure Protagonists, is. You control Randal, a somewhat lazy man who acts like a college student with a bad case of “I see, I take” attitude. Drinking with his best friend Matt and his Fiancé Sally, you end up getting drunk which leads to talking of the wedding and the presents you will bring, one of them being the Ring that Matt has acquired for the wedding, The One Ring… or something similar.
After sobering up, you find yourself with Matt’s wallet and the Ring he was going to give Sally, which is apparently cursed. Making your way to work, getting fired and selling the ring to pay your landlord all leads you back to your room for a well-deserved rest to a better tomorrow. Though you don’t wake to a Tuesday, you wake to a slightly altered repeat of the same day, with the objects you affected the time before staying in their altered state but the people having their memory reset.
The game continues on in a similar fashion from there on out, solve people’s problems, get access to new areas and basically progress the story whatever way you can. Spicing up a drink with Battery Acid is only one of the things you will do in the second day, though some can be considered a lot weirder.
The Demo I got to play only consisted of the introduction and the first 3 days but all together it took me around 5 hours to get to its end. The main game will have 7 Days, with would make the final game around 8-10 hours depending on how much harder the game’s puzzles and riddles become.
Gameplay
Randal’s Monday plays like most other Adventure Point and Clicks, with the mouse being the major controller you will use. Left click to pick up or combine items, right click to investigate and look at things, simple. This game doesn’t have much in the way of combining items in the first 3 days, and only contains around 2-3 items you need to inspect to find more items. Most of the items you need are hidden around the levels, given by NPCs or by solving riddles, some of which can only be triggered at certain points.
The gameplay itself is pretty solid and allows for players to get into the game in its early segments, but the vagueness of some of the actions becoming ludicrous at some points, to the point where you will hit the age old tactic of “Use everything on everything”. The game could definitely do with more hints or directions, as sometimes you will need to go to one area to get an item, then to go somewhere else to use that item on an object only to return to the first place to get another item.
Overall Thoughts and Feelings
The graphic style of the game is very appealing to my eye, it’s a cartoony style with crisp edges and obvious item outlines. There are some hiccups with animation and where people will move but their objects attached to them will not which will pull you out of the immersion sometimes. If items are unclear you can simple hold down the spacebar and it will put a Lego block on anything you can interact with, which is a godsend in some areas where there are tons of different objects and background items.
The sound and music in the game could use some work, though the beginning of the game does point this out so I’m not too worried about it for the final release. Hopefully there will be some more music and the syncing is fixed, as it does become quite apparent in the later sections, especially for long drawn out conversations.
Overall Randal’s Monday is set to be an interesting game, a somewhat fun mechanic and idea of repeating the same day with alterations. The game does feel like it drags on at some points as some conversations will last minutes longer then they should leaving you there just left clicking until it ends. A hint system would be great as the game is very vague at times, though the loading screens does allude to one so it could be added in the final version.
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