Randal's Monday
Preview
Hands-on with Repetitive Mondays
by Matt Porter
previewed on PC
It’s Monday... again!
After the conclusion of the Deponia series, it hasn’t taken Daedalic Entertainment long to get back in the classic point and click adventure game. Randal’s Monday will be coming out in a little over a month’s time, and we’ll be returning to the cynical and coarse style of humour that the Deponia games were well loved for. You play as Randal, who has been cursed to relive the same day over and over. It’s up to you to figure out why, and stop it from happening.
Geeky jokes galore
The similarities between this and Deponia are plain to see. The art is much the same, with stylised cartoony visuals that also partly betray the game’s adult nature. There is a lot of dialogue, with most options being just to add flavour or tell a few more jokes. And there are a lot of jokes. The point and click genre has obviously been done plenty of times before, and Daedalic stops it stagnating by continually having well written, and funny, scripts. Fans of Clerks may recognise the voice of Jeff Anderson, who plays the main character here. Excellent voice acting delivery has become a mainstay of Daedalic titles as well.
There are a lot of pop culture references in here too, especially to do with nerdy content. When we first saw the game at Gamescom this year, it was lovingly referred to as a “point and geek” game, and it’s easy to see why. Within the first few minutes of the first chapter, there are already references to Gordon Freeman and Guybrush Threepwood, and they keep on coming throughout the seven chapters.
Adult themes
As I alluded to earlier, though, this is not a title for your game loving kids. F-bombs are dropped left, right and centre, and there are lot more references of an adult nature besides. The story, although dipped in fantasy, is quite mature as well. You are cursed by a ring that you took from your friend Matt during a heavy night of drinking. The ring that he was about to give to his wife-to-be. Upon finding the ring missing, Matt kills himself in gruesome fashion.
This is part of the horror that Randal has to deal with when he discovers he is living the same Monday over and over again, let alone being late for work and behind on rent. However, it seems that every day is slightly different, and Matt has found some new way to kill himself. Only things that Randal has touched carry over to the next day, adding a new layer of mystery to the situation.
For point&click fans
It’s not all about the adult humour and geeky references though. Fans of the traditional point and click genre won’t be disappointed. Just about everything can either be picked up or interacted with, and even if it can’t, Randal will usually have some witty thing to say about it. You’ll be combining items and using them to solve bizarre puzzles to your heart’s content. This may have gotten old for some adventure fans, but there are still plenty out there who don’t mind clicking on everything and attempting to combine random objects together to just see what they do.
Randal’s Monday is a game that will no doubt appeal to a lot of people. It’s dark, funny and there are hours upon hours of content in there. A lot of it will just be listening to characters interacting with each other, but it’s entertaining nonetheless. I’ll be interested to play the rest of the game when it comes out, and find out why Monday is repeating itself. Having to live through one a week is bad enough.
