Monday Night Monsters

Sometimes, mindless activities are the best way to keep oneself entertained, especially if they feature at least some kind of humor. In fact, particularly silly ideas can turn into quite the huge phenomena, such is the case with Garry’s Mod. Even if most people use it to pose characters in funny situations, the fact remains that millions of copies have been sold over the years.

Monday Night Monsters is a simple and innocent idea, but it gets you hooked from the first few seconds. In essence, the whole point is for one team to come out successful at the end of the match by scoring the most goals. That’s a lot easier said than done, on the other hand, mainly because you have to control each player on the field separately, using RTS-style mechanics.

The game itself is quite barren in many regards, such as the fact that you cannot actually choose a team, customize the players, or anything like that. Instead, you are thrown right into the match while the commentators do their best to keep things amusing. In order to move the players, you have to pause the game and select each one of them individually, which is obviously quite frustrating at first.

The fact that you are never in full control of any player makes it difficult to concentrate sometimes. You do get to steer the one currently running with the ball, but everyone else is just still if you don’t do something. Thus, it might be a lot easier to just run around by yourself and try to score from far away than it is to coordinate all the players at once and try to pass the ball around.

Visually, the game features cartoony graphics and funny animations to keep the mood light, but that doesn’t mean it looks bad. In fact, it’s quite shiny and well designed for an indie production, even if the environment never changes, and neither do the players. The sound is hilarious as well, especially the commentator voices, although they are not using real words.

While Monday Night Monsters has a few mistakes and annoyances here and there, the fact remains that it is very fun to play, at least after you get used to the pause mechanics. Hence, if you want something light and amusing to provide you with a bit of relief, this might just do the trick.