Game Review: Adventure Games: Monochrome Inc. by P. Walker-Harding et al.

Adventure Games: Monochrome Inc. designed by Matthew Dunstan and Phil Walker-Harding, art by Maximillian Schiller, and published by Kosmos

The Adventure Games series is a set of cooperative games where one to four players explore a mysterious location. We played The Dungeon a long time ago (and didn't review it), which was a fun medieval mystery that had us exploring a castle. This game is set in modern times. Players are a crack infiltration team on a heist, hired by an unseen financier. Monochrome Incorporated is developing a new medicine but something fishy is going on. Breaking in at night, players explore various floors of the building to discover the formula for the new drug called "Rainbow." The drug promises amazing healing abilities but side effects do occur.

The game is played like a computer "point and click" adventure. Each large card representing a floor has several locations that can be investigated by reading paragraphs out of a booklet. Players collect items which can be combined together or with locations to move the story along. Occasionally something big enough happens to swap out large cards or start new chapters in the narrative, of which there are three.

Initially, we followed the turn order system of the instructions. It was a little tedious at points having to move around a lot or not do things until characters and items were in place. So we switched to discussing what to do, who should go where, and what we could accomplish to move the story along. The game became faster and more enjoyable. The game isn't timed like Unlock! or Exit: The Game (we never time ourselves anyway), though it does have a similar score system. We ignored the score system because we were interested in the cooperative narrative rather than the victory conditions. We wanted a great story, not a great score, at the end. Alternate endings are possible and we read through some of them because we were not going to replay the whole game just to get a different outcome in the last five minutes of play.

We enjoyed the game. The puzzles are not too hard though sometimes collecting all the right items requires some patience. One or two narrative bits didn't make sense to us but they were very minor and had no effect on our enjoyment. The game is a nice way to sit around for a couple of hours (which we divided into three sessions, leaving it set up on the dining room table) and work through the story.

If you like "point and click" adventures and don't mind a bit of zombie grimness (not too much) this is a fun time. Even my zombie-hating daughter thought it was okay.

Recommended.