Review: Randal’s Monday

Randal’s Monday is the first game to be developed by indie up and comers Nexus Game Studio, and it’s quite an achievement. I outwardly groaned when I heard it being filed under the self-proclaimed genre of ‘point and geek’, almost writing it off completely as another lame attempt to relive the glory days of the LucasArts era.

It wasn’t until I read about the involvement of Jeff Anderson and Jason Mewes during the games development that I sat up and began to take notice of. If a small indie developer can get two of the key actors in Kevin Smith’s View Askewniverse movies on board then it had to have more to offer than dick and fart jokes. And it really does.

Randal’s Monday follows Randal Hicks, voiced by Jeff Anderson himself, a sociopathic kleptomaniac forced to relive Monday forever until he can break a curse inflicted upon him by a mystical ring. It’s typical and clichéd, but it works. In fact, that’s the point. Randal’s Monday is so completely self-aware that it’s hard to imagine anything, no matter how clichéd, is there by accident.

There are seven chapters in total, each a Monday, and each taking anywhere between an hour and a half to several hours to finish. Each Monday is different, with the effects of the previous chapter still in action, but as different events that now took place on the Sunday instead.

Gameplay is your standard point and click affair; you point, you click, you hope for the best. Randal needs to collect items to solve various puzzles around town in order to progress through his quest to rid himself of his curse and find out exactly what is happening to him. It was here, sadly, that Randal’s Monday became problematic for me, at least initially.

Now I’ll admit, my experience with point and click games is fairly limited. I’ve played most of the classics, but never to completion. There was just something about the way of thinking needed to play those games that I couldn’t really get my head around. I have finished Machinarium though, and it was delightful.

I have trouble with logic puzzles. I’m always trying to think outside the box because there’s no way the answer could be that obvious, could it? That way of thinking will get you in trouble in Randal’s Monday, until it doesn’t, and here is the source of my frustration.

The mix of logical and completely illogical puzzles in Randal’s Monday can (and did) become infuriating. Sometimes I’d spend a good hour walking around trying out different combinations of items to no avail, only to find out that I’d missed an item that was blended into the background. When that happened I’d sigh, feel a bit of an idiot, and carry on with a smile knowing it was my fault for overlooking something.

Other times I’d spend an unimaginable amount of time roaming around, only to collect an item I’d been trying to pick up for the previous three chapters with no luck, then mash it together with some more random items, and put the combined mess into a pixel specific hole before continuing.

One time I spent thirty minutes wandering around aimlessly before realising all I had to do was open a window.

I can’t see this being a problem for point and click veterans, but newcomers may struggle a bit, like I did. Luckily, then, Nexus Game Studios were kind enough to include a hint system to help people along the way. It’s not the most intuitive of systems, more than once I found myself clicking through steps I’d already taken until finally finding the hint I need, but it works, and it helps.

There’s also a Steam achievement for clicking the ‘Kill Kitty’ (this game’s ‘next hint’) button 20 times, so at least my incompetence was rewarded.

Where Randal’s Monday really shines is the dialogue. And there is a lot of dialogue. Conversations can last anywhere from mere seconds to several minutes, and can throw in more pop culture references than an episode of Spaced. The jokes can start to wear a bit thin though, and Randal’s inability to get to the point began to grate on me whenever I felt like I was making progress.

There were several occasions when I was given various answers to choose from, only to find out I had to select them all in order to progress. This annoyed me immensely because it made the conversation feel disjointed, ruining the flow and pulling me out of the experience.

Every single line of dialogue is acted out by an excellent voice cast, including Jason Mewes throwing on his beanie and reprising his most famous of roles for a cameo that will get any Kevin Smith fan quoting along within seconds. It’s unfortunate, then, that the weak link seems to be Anderson himself.

His smarmy delivery leaves every syllable dripping with the sarcasm and arrogance that he’s known and loved for, and it works well for the character, but the character himself is so unlikable at times I found myself getting angry and sharing in the frustration on the NPC’s he was interacting with.

Hands down some of the best dialogue went to the character of Matt, Randal’s best friend and partner in crime (who looks uncannily like Harold Ramis in the movie Stripes). At several points in the game Randal comes across notes left by Matt that play homage to classic movies and are performed with such heart it’s impossible not to smile.

Like the dialogue, every location in the game is absolutely covered in pop culture references, from the obvious to the completely obscure, and the love shown for Tim Schafer is wonderfully apparent. Every time I loaded up my save I’d find something new, and my appreciation for the team’s love of all things geek kept growing.

The visuals in Randal’s Monday are great. Each character and locale are hand drawn and absolutely ooze personality. Each frame is wonderfully animated, and I often found myself in awe at how smooth everything looked in motion – the whole thing looks like a Seth McFarlane cartoon come to life.

Sadly, revisiting the same locations again and again, and interacting with the same faces did start to become tedious, and by chapter five I was ready to throw in the towel. But I’m a professional (sort of), and I was determined to see Randal’s Monday through to its epic conclusion, and I’m so glad I did.

By around the half-way point something clicked, and all of a sudden things began to make sense. I had come around to the game’s way of thinking and I started having fun again. A lot of fun actually. The second half of the games is definitely where Randal’s Monday shines, mixing things up so much I had to keep reminding myself I was playing the same game.

Even when I’d completely fallen out with it, there was something about Randal’s Monday that kept me coming back for more. There’s a charm to it that’s missing from AAA games, and it only takes a few minutes of playing to see the love and passion that went into making it, that would have no doubt been lost with a bigger team. Considering this is Nexus Game Studio’s first game, Randal’s Monday is a huge achievement, and despite its problems, it’s impossible for me not to recommend it to fans of the genre, and for those who are curious to try it.