Monochroma isn’t shy about its influences. It looks like Limbo. It features an escort mechanic similar to Ico. It yearns to express a fraternal bond like Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons. By defining its look, play-style, and passion through a buffet of modern classics, Monochroma’s identity is left to the strength of its execution. There’s nothing wrong with combining influences and values many hold sacred, but it needs to meet its massive expectations by creating something more than the sum of its parts. Unfortunately, while Monochroma manages some delicate moments, it can’t escape obscene points of pure frustration or mechanical tedium.
Kickstarted to completion in August of 2013, Monochroma was pitched as a “cinematic puzzle platformer about being a kid and caring for a little brother in a chilling 1950s dystopia.” Taking the shape of a 2D, physics-based platformer, the central goal of the game is, indeed, ensuring the safety of the smaller brother while making your way through a treacherous world. Immobile due to a hurt leg and scared of being left in any area not explicitly well lit, challenge arrives in getting the little brother safely through alternating puzzle and platforming challenges. Again, on the surface there’s nothing inherently wrong with Monochroma’s design. It doesn’t fall to pieces until you pick up the controller.
A platformer’s soul is tied to its jump mechanic. Kings of the genre have always undertaken an incredible process of refinement to make sure it feels right and functions properly inside the trappings of its world. From Mario and Sonic to Prinny and Super Meat Boy, jumping is equal parts powerful and capable. It’s the oath to its players and the fuel for its world. Strongly relying on its internal physics system, Monochroma’s jump is subject to the gravity and inertia of its surroundings. Aside from hitting switches and pulling boxes, jumping and grabbing ledges are the only mechanics in the game.
Unfortunately some of the toughest jumps in Monochroma involve ascending a box directly in front of your character. Really. I couldn’t tell you how many times I mindlessly jumped toward this otherwise normal box hoping to god the ledge-grabbing animation would kick in and I’d move past a one-second obstacle. Worse was when I’d fail the proceeding challenge, get sent back to the checkpoint, and have to roll the dice on the dreaded insurmountable box once more. There are countless instances in Monochroma where simply jumping over a passé object is one of the greater challenges in the game, and I’m mostly convinced it was unintentional.
Combing the jump mechanic with any sort of water-based challenge and Monochroma doubles the recipe for disaster. The buoyancy of boxes renders their surface unstable on occasions where said boxes have to float on water. Standing on those floating boxes, as Monochroma sometimes requires, is an exercise in frustration. Your character’s jump move has a predefined distance, and trying not to slide off the inevitably-rotating box requires a jump to maintain any semblance of stability. Trying to jump typically resulted in an unintended plunge to my death. I was supposed to be fighting a rising water level and dragging boxes to clear an area in time, not wrestling with the physics engine over the proper way to stand on a box.
Monochroma’s distinct lack of assured quality is a constant threat to the player. Throughout my five or so hours with the game, in addition to the faults already described, I found myself permanently stuck inside some objects. This necessitated going back to the last checkpoint, which frequently required I completely start the puzzle I had nearly completed over again. I found many of Monochroma’s puzzles satisfying in their solution but boring in their execution; I knew what I had to do, but the game’s slow movement and poor sense of detection turned every obstacle into a chore. Combining with a copious amount needless repetition and I found myself cursing the game more frequently than I was enjoying it.
The whole game just reeks of an unskilled production. The music, which was actually quite good, would occasionally cut out when I died and the game reloaded. This robbed me of one particularly impressive sequence where giant pistons came crashing down to the floor in sync with the music. Instead of collaboration between my eyes and my ears, it was another physics-based jump challenge. Once I missed a jump for a rope, and the game’s physics system shot me across the screen and to my death, sending me back to the last checkpoint. Likewise, the game’s final challenge is compromised by your character’s inability to react with any sort of speed, rendering it more a test of luck than any true skill.
With platformers you’re intended to learn from your mistakes and execute better the next time. Eventually, you may become proficient enough to not make mistakes in the first place, but that’s not an absolute requirement. Limbo presented a great example of a game that wasn’t afraid to kill the player if it meant they could learn something from its deliberate pace. Monochroma, on the other hand, is content to kill the player repeatedly until he or she manages to break the chains of its wonky physics system. Its puzzles, though well intended, don’t veer too far off the path of LittleBigPlanet user-created levels, or virtually any first attempt at stringing together basic challenges. Conveyor belts, chase sequences, rushing to throw switches, slides, pushing boxes around, you’ve done all of this – and done it better – elsewhere.
This leaves Monochroma’s implicit narrative and muted presentation as the only reason to warrant a purchase; for its part, it totally works. Everything in between black and white (and sometimes red) conveys the dirge of emotion inside its dark and dreary world. Monochroma also deserves a tip of the hat for trying to tell a story without saying anything. The entire game is completely wordless, allowing the plot to unfold by absorbing its environment and – oddly – its loading screens. The happy-go-lucky advertisements packed inside loading screens provide a nice, and important, juxtaposition to the proper game.
Playing the role of an older brother with his chimney sweep hat and bright red scarf, it’s hard not to feel something for the guy. The ending, too, is perfect in its artful silence. Unfortunately neither the main character’s compassionate demeanor nor the serene finale are enough to erase the doldrums of drabness endured on the way there. The honesty of Monochroma’s intentions are unmistakably pure, I just wish there could have been a better game hiding inside of them.
