• Price: $19.99 USD
• Developer: Scarlet String Studios
• Publisher: Astrolabe Games
• Release Date: October 31, 2024

A review code was kindly provided by Astrolabe Games on behalf of Scarlet String Studios. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Monospaced Lovers is an “exploration-driven platformer” that incorporates elements from a wide variety of genres. It’s an adventure game with puzzles, bullet hell boss battles, and visual novel-inspired storytelling with a 100,000 word count. Notable inspirations include games such as Fez, LA-MULANA, and Majora’s Mask.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started the game, but the description sounded pretty interesting. You play as a young woman named Clara, who wakes up to find that her phone has been swapped with someone else’s device. The pair begin to communicate, and the mysterious conversation partner can sometimes see what Clara is doing.

The story takes place in a “metafictional, fantasy-filled land,” and as you explore you’ll discover secrets, solve puzzles, and reveal new paths that expand this world. Clara is told that she must go on a quest to prevent the destruction of her beloved town.

And speaking of destruction, one of your first acts will be smashing a rock wall to find an important item. Jump and slide around every part of town, from the sky to the system of caves below ground. Wherever you go, you’ll be sure to find one of the game’s 60+ collectibles.

Some of these collectibles will be easier to find – and access – than others. The same can be said about the platforming, puzzles, and bullet hell battles. Avoid obstacles – such as lasers – that block your path to the next room, and solve creative (yet often frustrating) puzzles.

My puzzle-solving capabilities vary depending on the type of puzzles I’m working with. I had some trouble with a puzzle based on binary code in the very first chapter. They tried to provide assistance with a helpful graphic, but I still just could not wrap my head around the concept. I solved that puzzle using guesswork.

The third chapter had the hardest puzzles for me, with multiple sections requiring the player to figure out music scale-based puzzles. I only remember the “F, A, C, E” part of sheet music, and I can’t identify notes by reading or hearing them. You have to press piano keys in the correct order to solve puzzles, but again, I don’t know which notes go with the keys.

I really think they tried to include good hints, but without an extremely detailed example I was lost on what to do for hours. I didn’t understand the function of the blue and red buttons at first, and I didn’t know how to figure out which keys to press.

There were 26 keys and 8 notes in each puzzle, and I spent a long time pressing each key and deleting any incorrect input to very gradually solve the puzzle. I also didn’t realize what the blue and pink notes meant, and I didn’t even notice the arrows and exclamation points until I was hours into my attempts.

They did include an assist mode for both the puzzle and platforming components, but personally I found the puzzle hints too vague. Sometimes you have to complete platforming sections without being able to see where you are. Other sections ask you to get to higher ground by jumping on invisible platforms.

There are a couple of key items that will help you figure out the solutions to puzzles. The main 4 items remain in your possession once you’ve acquired them. This zany world is not only home to Clara and other humans, but also some slimes and adorable tanuki. You can use your newly acquired earbuds to translate whatever they have to say.

One of the NPCs offers a selection of different teas that have different effects on Clara. These teas can give you the ability to hear or see things differently, which help you solve the puzzles. I had trouble remembering some of the effects because they aren’t labeled, and I didn’t always know when or where to use them.

While I appreciate the ideas behind the puzzles, I don’t tend to do well without explicit instructions. I never would have thought of most of the solutions on my own without a lot of help or guesswork (such as the way you unlock the next boss areas).

I’m not always great at bullet hell games, but while I did find the bosses challenging even on easy mode, they at least had attack patterns that I could identify. I think that easy mode lets you take more hits, and the boss presumably has slower attacks?

If a boss defeats you, you can simply choose to replay the battle in easy or hard mode. Each boss battle has 3 phases divided into 2 segments each. The first phase is usually pretty easy, but I usually lost quite a bit in the next two phases. I really liked how they included an option to practice the sections you’re having trouble with.

It was also nice to have checkpoints for some of the platforming sections. (I played with both assist modes turned on, so I can’t say whether there are checkpoints without them.) It really felt like the gameplay became a lot harder the longer I played, so it was nice to have some leniency here and there.

There are 5 chapters in Monospaced Lovers, and I made it to the boss battle in Chapter 4 before I just had to call it quits. I’m simply not skilled enough to get through that bullet hell section. I’ve seen a skip option after X failures in some games, which might have been a good accessibility option here.

I really like the art style, setting, and story concept. I also enjoyed the writing – especially the scenes with bomb-happy Landon. It’s just that without tutorials, the gameplay can feel fairly unintuitive to players like me. A lot of the puzzles seemed to require players to be familiar with specialized knowledge (i.e. binary and music).

If you don’t mind games with a multitude of challenging elements and you can perform well without much direction, you may enjoy this game. Although it’s not quite my cup of tea, I can still see its redeeming qualities and the reasons that other players could appreciate it more.