Monospaced Lovers

Genre: Puzzle-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Monospaced Lovers is a Puzzle-Platformer released in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. This game puts players in the role of Clara, a young woman who awakens to discover that her phone has been replaced with one belonging to someone else, and soon finds that he has her phone, with this occurrence being connected to a self-proclaimed “God of Binary” who taunts the two with nebulous messages and puzzles. This spurs on a quest to discover what exactly is going on with these phones, and the strange events of the world around them.

Before going on, let me say that Monospaced Lovers is a confusing mix of elements that’s difficult to parse at times, put together in odd ways. In part because of this, I find myself fluctuating wildly between loving this game and hating it.

The story is one part of this – it’s an interesting premise, but poorly-delivered, and there seems to be an issue with the translation or something, but even the core structure has issues – Clara’s world is a strange one of talking tanukis, clouds to jump on and houses suspended in mid-air, as well as supposedly aggressive slimes that actually seem pretty chill, all things considered. And yet, in this strange world, waking up to have the wrong phone sitting next to you is such a mysterious event that Clara concludes magic must be involved?

Another part of this game that’s a mix of wonderful and terrible is the presentation. On the side of wonderful you have some lovely hand-drawn 2D characters with really nice animation, hand-painted backgrounds, and an outstanding soundtrack of mellow tunes with a mix of instrumental and synthesized elements like Two Parallel Lines, Welcome to Pandora’s Sandbox, Morning Coffee, Late Night Tea, Slime Groove, and It’s An Adventure, Right?, as well as the faster-paced electric guitar theme, Get Good, and the vocal pop theme, Paper Planes. There’s so much good here, but it’s undermined by the artificial-looking tile-based world, and ugly low-resolution characters that look particularly bad when the game zooms in. It’s bizarre, like whoever was in charge of making this game’s assets had some real artistic talent that was then mangled to get it into the game.

The love it/hate it thing continues with the gameplay. There’s some fun platforming here, and some clever puzzles, but the former is really harmed by massive difficulty spikes which even early on will challenge even seasoned Platformer players, and the latter is harmed by unclear goals and really poor signposting.

These are exemplified early on in the game, when you need to bring meat to a slime guarding an area’s exit, but cannot carry the meat over a series of vertical walls to reach the slime. One of the characters says something about a cave, but until that point the only cave you saw is in completely the opposite direction. The game doesn’t point out that the cave in question needs to be uncovered by dashing into a section of floor you can’t even get to while holding the meat, and which could be easily missed even if you’re looking for it.

Then, immediately after, you’re faced with puzzles that inexplicably need to be solved by finding the numerical representation of a letter in binary (what?), followed by multiple rooms that require precise movements to dodge lasers, followed by another puzzle that cannot be solved without leaving the building entirely from the direction you came in… something the game doesn’t indicate you need to do.

I am just so frustrated by Monospaced Lovers, because I see what this game is aiming for, and parts of this game are absolutely beautiful and at times even clever, but they’re pieced together and presented in a way that makes that beauty and cleverness so very difficult to appreciate. If you have a lot of patience, and a decent level of skill at Platforming and puzzle-solving, you may appreciate the better parts of Monospaced Lovers. Otherwise, I suggest you skip this one.

tl;dr – Monospaced Lovers is a Puzzle-Platformer that has players taking the role of Clara, a young woman who awakens to find her phone has been swapped with someone else’s, starting her and the owner of the phone on a quest to figure out what’s going on. This is a game with some really beautiful and clever elements, but they’re somewhat ruined by some poor design choices, questionable editing decisions, poor signposting, and nasty difficulty spikes. If you’re a skilled and patient fan of this genre, you may find what’s good to outweigh what’s bad, but otherwise this may not be for you.

Grade: C+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2024 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Puzzle Game

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