A
hideous and deadly, yet
decidedly pitiful monster
stands before you, waiting
to turn your adventuring party to
mush after just eight turns. What
do you do—and, more specifically,
when do you do it—to slay the
creature and prevent this terrible
fate? Monstrüous is a wonderfully
fluid point-and-click puzzler that
posits the above question, while
revelling in the (often dismal)
outcomes of your decisions.
Rather than controlling the four-
person party directly, your sole
interaction is deciding the order in
which they perform their special
moves. Will you have your amphibian
bard dude summon a protective
bubble right at the start, or a few
turns in when the monster has a
mean look on his face? Will you give
the princess empowering coffee
before you summon that fiery comet,
or after those monstrous eggs have
been laid at her feet? Your attacks
have counters, as do the monster’s,
and these need to be carefully
choreographed in order to create the
turn order that leads to success.
It’s a game of trial and error,
then—but it’s rare that the error part
is this much fun. This is a beautiful
game, with a whimsical art style that
reminds me of Adventure Time, and
several hundred frames (surely) of
slick animation. Every failed and
successful attack, and every
unforeseen death, triggers a charming
bit of animation—really, seeing them
all will be your main impetus for
replaying the game.
Monstrüous takes me back to the
glory days of flash games: To silly
little experiences with terrifically
fluid animation. It’s sweet,
short and slight, and the
perfect thing to occupy a
rainy lunch hour.75
MONSTER MUNCH
Restore order in MONSTRÜOUS. By Tom Sykes
EXPECT TO PAY
NothingDEVELOPER
nonomiyoLINK
http://www.bit.ly/monitchNEED TO KNOW
Alas, there’s no ‘run away
screaming’ action.A
teenage girl steals an x-ray
machine in order to
perform gruesome
experiments on her body. It’s a hell
of a premise, but that’s par for the
course for Deconstructeam, whose
varied back catalogue includes a
cyberpunk pottery game. The
studio describes 11:45 A Vivid Life
as a ‘narrative experiment’ paving
the way for a bigger project, and I’d
wager the experiment has to do
with the game’s unusually
subjective method of storytelling.
Protagonist Laynie essentially decides
her own story in this point-and-click.
She feels that her skeleton isn’t her
own, and the obvious solution is to
x-ray parts of her body, and then to
cut out any foreign matter she finds.
You’re in charge of the scanning, via a
cumbersome minigame that you have
to repeat far too often, but Laynie
(thankfully) handles the surgery, by
yanking out her teeth, false eye, and
other curious matter.
The animation is too bloodless for
anyone to be that grossed-out by the
mutilation, but it’s alarming how
readily Laynie will harm herself.
Presented with each bodily artifact,
you then decide on their origin, be it
supernatural or the result of abuse.
Your answers subtly divert the story
towards one extreme or the other,
before a mysterious figure implores
Laynie to come back home.
I feel it’s a narrative that only
means something if the truth is
grounded in real-world trauma,
rather than in alien experimentation,
but as none of the backstories is ever
explicitly confirmed it’s possible that
any, or all, or none of the story
options are really true. I’m intrigued
to see where the
experiment will go from
here, as this is a sturdy
skeleton to build upon.71
X-R AY SPECS
Do some surgery in 11:45 A VIVID LIFE. By Tom Sykes
EXPECT TO PAY
NothingDEVELOPER
DeconstructeamLINK
http://www.bit.ly/avividlifeNEED TO KNOW
Stealing a car won’t be the
worst thing you do today.Laynie is oddly relaxed about
using pliers to rip out her teeth.Monstrüous / 11:45 A Vivid Life
FREE GAMES REVIEW