Monochroma

This atmospheric puzzler/platformer takes you to a 50s dystopia. Playing as a kid with a little brother puts boundaries on you to go wherever you want freely. Monochroma is a great first start for the studio, but brings nothing new to this genre.

Clearly inspired by Limbo, Monochroma is an experience fans of the former will enjoy. There are some aspects that should have been polished, but it does deserve a try.

While obviously being influenced by games like Limbo, Monochroma has a flavor and story all its own. Monochroma is a good game at heart, but it's hidden under technical errors and gameplay flaws that gave me no end of frustration.

Monochroma wants you to debate your every move, to drain you of color and splash you with hope when you play well. It’s often too quiet to know if you’re doing just that.

What Monochroma gets right, however, is tone and gameplay. The puzzle platforming is fun to solve once you get the feel for character movement, there’s a lot of variety in puzzle design, and some very clever level layout ties everything together.

Despite being clearly inspired by Limbo, Monochroma finds its own voice and uses it to say interesting things. Sadly, its level design lacks imagination and the mechanics are a bit rough, so you should consider buying it only if you really dig its style.

Another case of "would have been much better with more fine tuning". The botched controls and some bugs are annoying.

It’s a great looking game. The look and feel is wonderful and moody, punctuated with flashes of red, such as a boy’s blowing scarf or a blooming flower found at the bottom of a well. And it’s great seeing games coming out of all corners of the world. But this only makes the experience all the more frustrating.

Monochroma is a good puzzle platformer with a remarkable artistic level, inspired by famous products such as ICO and Limbo, however, the game mechanics are sometimes affected by imprecise controls and a physics engine not always responsive. The social commitment of the developers is laudable.

Despite some memorable imagery, Monochroma plays like a budget-price Limbo. [Sept. 2014, p.69]

The arty crust hides a tasty platformer, that is unfortunately marred by perpetual darkness. The gloomy atmosphere rules everything.

Amidst all the other plateaued features the game has to offer, it’s not enough to maintain sufficient buzz or convince jaded gamers not to wait for a seasonal sale.

A Limbo-like game with good visuals and inspired puzzle design, ruined by frustrating controls, poor animations and some minor bugs.

Monochroma has the heart of a good dramatic game, but it has neither the soul nor mechanics of one.

Nowhere Studios have an artistic eye that spoke in a unique and moving way to me at first but the technical problems voided that emotional connection and Monochroma ended up being a slog rather than a joy.

To the question if Monochroma meets the high expectations raised from the Kickstarter campaign, the answer is no. However, despite the game's mediocrity, there are some glimpses of quality and since it's the studio's first attempt, there could be better results in the future.

In truth, it's an average game, with the music and the presentation proposing a more dramatic and meaningful experience than is actually manifested in the gameplay. [Issue#150, p.118]

Monochroma is a flawed but beautiful game that has a few shining moments, but for the most part struggles with the two most important aspects of a puzzle platformer: the puzzles and the platforming.

It is more than obvious that Monochroma's inspiration is derived -mainly- from the excellent Limbo, presenting a rather interesting dystopian world. Unfortunately the large number of bugs, the unimaginative riddles and the inability to create any interest for the fate of the two brothers make this game utterly forgettable.

Monochroma looks great, and it wants gamers to get highly intoxicated by its extraordinary variety of emotions. However, even the most beautiful stylization of the world cannot fix imprecise movement of characters in a genre where perfect accuracy is essential. With a considerable amount of irritating puzzles Monochroma is thus the perfect recipe for tantrums.

It's easy to fall in love with Monochroma's style, but the stiff and slow responsiveness of the controls and the annoying brother on your back, makes it a tough challenge to complete the game.

Limbo-like Monochroma has some stunning looking environments but is apart from that a quite hollow shell of a puzzle-platformer. The fate of the two protagonists could have been more involving, and the same could be said about the uninspired puzzles. Controls and ingame mechanics struggle as well and make the game hard to recommend to any but fans of the genre.

Despite its impressive audiovisual presentation, it fails in the areas that make a game a game. It is beautiful in its own dismal way, and the story it tells is decent, but I could not wait for it to end so I would not have to deal with the frustrating control and dull design decisions.

Monochroma is a game that I wanted to enjoy, and I thought it would be worthwhile even halfway through the adventure. But things really go off the rails as you push onward, with most of the later puzzles demanding precision that's just not possible.

Unfortunately while Monochroma's story manages some delicate moments, its gameplay can't escape obscene points of needless frustration and mechanical tedium. It’s the latter that comes to define the experience.