Adventure Gamers - Forums

Egon - 20 September 2023 03:43 AM

This looks very interesting! Was only watching trailer (won’t even try the demo, I’ll rather wait for the full game), but the only thing I didn’t like was sterile voice acting. It felt so fake. But the story looks intriguing and I love The Dig vibes.

In the demo i felt like it got better as it went.

Just gave this a try and enjoyed it, will be buying upon release. I don’t remember much about Tunguska games besides the fact that I enjoyed them enough to not have anything negative remembered, but also they didn’t break into my top 100 either. So, I’m thinking of them as of solid, middle-of-the-road experience that was positive overall.

P.S. I’m usually picky about VO, but the one from Monolith worked for me just fine.

It’s out now. Decided to give it a try - I’ll probably write something once I’m done with it (which honestly feels like I’m both “almost” and “surely not yet”), but so far I have a few glitches (had to skip a minigame because it kept getting stuck, some bits were untranslated German), the story is very different from what I expected, and the puzzles are honestly just way too easy (except for one which I still don’t understand even though I’ve done it ^^; ).

I want to play the game but my backlog is so huge right now. Let me know what you think though.

Well, turns out I was at the end already; or just before what I’d call the final act. Let’s go over the main things - I think the demo gave the correct impression insofar as the majority of the game goes.

The 2D art is very nice, and the 3D art and animations sometimes blend a bit better and look a bit better and sometimes not so much, but I don’t think I ever found things too ugly. I’d rather have had something more consistent, I think, but it’s okay as is too.

Sounddesign is forgettable.

UI and such all kept working fine, the one technical bit I found unnecessary was the limited number of save slots. Not that there’s anything you’d specifically need them for; I don’t think there’s choices or dead ends or that sort of thing but ... just why? It’s not 1993 ...

The puzzles stay exactly on the same level as in the demo. You walk around, pick up some bits, combine them, done. And they are kept on a fairly logical level - yes, of course, once or twice some bits aren’t signaled too well or the game is a bit specific about the order of things, those sorta usual bits, but it’s very rare. The problem is that that made the game just too easy by my taste.
There was, as I mentioned before, that one puzzle that left me confused and I just got through trial/error and that I still don’t understand, but other than that I was basically all throughout “yupp, x, y, z, go go go, done” ^^;
The minigames added a bit of variety but stayed mostly busywork. Again, doesn’t get more complex than that small puzzle in the demo. Indeed, many are simpler - there’s for example one where you got to disconnect a battery. You do that by pulling out all connecting cables. Done, “puzzle” solved. ^^;;;

Now, let’s talk story ... I’d also talk “characters” but there’s really very little to say there. Which ... is a bit of a problem. As for the story - it’s pointless to talk about without a massive spoiler, unfortunately. But let’s talk about the non-spoiler-y bits first.

Uhm. So clearly it’s not just “you crashlanded and that’s it, survive”. I think nobody will be surprised by the fact that there is indeed a twist to the story. The twist does not matter too much for let’s say 3/4th of the story; you can just play those “straight”; going around, trying to figure things out. Okay. Nothing too exciting, nothing too bad. You are just exploring, though similar to some other adventure games the “chunk” of the game is actually in some few locations. Once you get to that point you’ll be stuck there basically until the ending sequence.

The end sequence to me opens once the twist comes and it is - serious spoiler - the ancient and forsaken trope of “it was all just a dream”. Yupp. You’re actually in a coma. It’s not a scifi game at all. You are just walking through some ‘dream’ and trying to wake up. Congratulations, everything you thought might have mattered was just irrelevant.
God I hated it. I sat there, borderline unwilling to believe that a writer would pull this sorta crap still. But they did.

There’s a message to it of course - it’s about family. That’s what makes it so powerful! #memes It was stupid, cheesy, didn’t build up to it, didn’t create an emotional investment, didn’t bother with the characters you are possibly supposed to care about; anything that might have made this already awful idea “kind of” work was just absent.

Begrudgingly, still spoiler, it does explain the attitude of the heroine. It’s specifically about how she imagines having an adventure, so being a bit flippant about it makes sense then. That of course does not help while you’re actually playing those parts ...

Luckily by this stage I was kinda “meh” on the game so I wasn’t so bothered I ended up actively hating everything about the game. But once I got to the credits I pressed Alt+F4, threw it into the trashcan, and made sure to make a note of the developer ‘cause I’m never going to play anything written by them again ^^

So ... yeah. Worst adventure game I have played in a while and I wish I had just altogether skipped it.

But of course that’s 80% due to the story, which I ended up hating. So people that don’t might get a ... still quite average p&c adventure. Maybe if you want to play an adventure game but hate any sort of challenging puzzles? Maybe. It looks nice. Sometimes. ^^;

Eh, who knows. My opinion can be a bit special ... but goddamit I really did not like this one

I’m currently on the road, so not able to play much and didn’t buy this one yet. Thought quite a couple of times whether or not to read your spoiler or not, Pyoro-2, but it’s not like I was heavily invested in this, just enjoyed the demo, so I went ahead and read it, and I’m glad I did.

I don’t know from what exact posts, but I got a feeling that our adventure tastes differ, and normally I’d decide to go for a game anyway, but that spoiler is something I’ve come to really dislike as well (I hate being invested just to see “Just Joking!” by the creators across the board - film, literature, games), so I think I’ll leave it on my “buy on super sale” wishlist for now, and skip the “buy upon release” part.
Thank you.

I wish I’d seen your post yesterday Pyoro before I went ahead & bought the game! I don’t know when I’m going to have time to concentrate on playing the game amidst pending major upheaval in my life (in a good way hopefully!) but I’m now curious to see how awful it is? 

So happy to see that Monolith got finally released! It has been on my radar since Jackal made a post about it at the end of 2014.

But I just saw from https://www.adventurecorner.de/reviews/9904/monolith-review that the game was announced 12 years ago! Is it so? Anyone else finds some links about news or something from 2011?

I’m now very encouraged to progress with the game as I really liked the demo, when I have time, following the fairly positive review here.

Already finished the game. Interesting one, definitely worth the price. Amazing artwork, good character animation. Interesting story which kept my attention right till the end. Not a lot of challenge though, fairly easy puzzles even if the progress seems difficult the solution is almost always quite simple, you just have to read and listen to see the hints. Like the safe puzzle. Looked confusing but it was actually very easy. I definitely recommend. Will write a small review later.

I am playing the full game Monolith and have a mix feeling about it. It is pretty good on graphics and story but the puzzles are my complain. I hate when you have try every object with the hotspots or other objects. There is no logical things in trying to combine objects just to figure it out if it will work. Don’t know if I’m getting old but I don’t have time to try everything with everything. Although the game have a build in walkthrough, the walkthrough uses different names for certan objects that of those in game. But, otherwise, is a good game.

I’m sorry to say that Monolith started well but ended beeing one of the worst games I played. Too much philosophy and talking. In the end, it turn out to be not a game but a story about existence. Not my cup of tea.

UruBoo - 12 November 2023 05:00 PM

I hate when you have try every object with the hotspots or other objects. There is no logical things in trying to combine objects just to figure it out if it will work.

Isn’t all that like a trademark of that developer?

For instance, I remember playing Secret Files: Tunguska, and while the story and premise were kind of interesting, it had a lot of that “try everything until something works” going on. I managed to finish it without walkthrough though*, as otherwise it wasn’t that hard.

* = Admittedly in one spot I had to double check from a walkthrough if I was doing things correctly or not, but I don’t count that, as the physics in that puzzle work completely opposite to what real life physics would be like.

I hate when you have try every object with the hotspots or other objects. There is no logical things in trying to combine objects just to figure it out if it will work.

Not even close. That´s what i wrote earlier that you have to READ and LISTEN to every word and then you´ll see that you don´t have to combine every object.