Always Sometimes Monsters Review

Narrative-driven games are a tricky breed; when done correctly - like in the case of Gone Home - they offer an immersive and moving experience that you just can’t get from any other medium. Other times, they’re less successful. Always Sometimes Monsters, a new title made in RPG Maker and published by Devolver Digital, is one of those games.

The story begins at a party, with you as the host. Here you are able to talk to all of the guests, and choose one to be the story’s protagonist, along with their partner. Skip ahead a year, and you find your main character alone and being kicked out of her (I chose a female character) apartment because she was unable to meet the deadline for a publishing deal. Then, as if things weren't bad enough, she receives an invitation to her ex’s wedding.

Having never gotten over the break-up and now forced to live on the streets, the following story takes up the next 30 days in your character’s life as they try to sort themselves out and get across the country to make a last-ditch attempt to win their ex back. Along the way you become involved in political conspiracies, breaking and entering into a mansion and taking part in an illegal race, among many other endeavours that crop up in this road trip story.

The main goal in Always Sometimes Monsters is basically to make enough money to get from one town to the next, while also keeping your character fed to avoid starving. To earn money you’ll sometimes have to do jobs which range from clipping marijuana buds, to making tofu burgers, to simply moving boxes from one side of a room to another. All of them involve repeating the same tedious task for long stretches of time. I can only assume that this is done in an attempt to make the player feel sympathetic towards the protagonist, but when doing so takes up a considerable portion of the game you begin to wonder if the story is worth the monotony.

Perhaps the biggest issue in the game is its pacing. While some conversations and sections of the story kept me interested, the rest mostly consisted of wandering around one of the game’s four town locations or in mundane discussions with often uninteresting characters. Every attempt at melancholy or genuine emotion is also soon undercut by slapstick humour or a ridiculous, wacky character. It's a shame, because the dialogue is well written and at times offers some interesting views on marriage, love, friendship, religion, and fate. The other issue is that the story is stretched over 30 days, when a week probably would have sufficed.

In an odd meta moment, it is possible to talk to the game’s creators - a two-man team named Vagabond Dog - in the game,and this is one of many fourth-wall-breaking moments to be found. There are playable parodies of other video games to found on arcade machines within the world, including a spoof of Hotline Miami (another Devolver Digital title) named Coldline Toronto and a Flappy Bird knock-off named Crappy Dog. These touches show that the developers have clearly put a lot of effort into filling out their world, but I can’t help but think their efforts could have been better focused on adding more fulfilling gameplay in the story rather than gimmicky minigames.

As is traditional for RPG Maker titles, there is no voice acting in Always Sometimes Monsters - only written dialogue. Backing the gameplay is an ‘80s electro-inspired soundtrack that is enjoyable at first, but it soon becomes repetitive and definitely isn’t interesting enough to support the basic gameplay. I soon found myself wanting to turn off the music and listen to my own, but the game offers no way of doing so.

In the end, I had to ‘Alt-Tab’ out of the application and mute it in the desktop volume mixer. This made some of the more tedious sections of gameplay much less irksome, and it seems crazy to me that such a standard option is not included. It would perhaps be understandable if the music was used to emphasize the emotions of a certain scene, but it is never used well in this way.

I encountered a few bugs in my time with the game, the most annoying of which related to the menu system. On a few occasions, I would pause the game only to find two options highlighted. This made it impossible to know which option I was selecting and even caused me to lose around 30 minutes of progress due to accidentally exiting without saving, which was extremely irritating.

You can’t fault its ambition, but ultimately due to pacing issues, hit-and-miss writing and a story that is altogether too long, the game is never very enjoyable. If you’ve got the patience to put up with the occasional periods where nothing much happens, Always Sometimes Monsters will reward you with a memorable, if very uneven, experience.