Moncage

Masterfully crafted puzzle game that takes place on five sides of a cube as you piece together the story through interconnecting scenes. Moncage is a relaxing perspective-based puzzle game with pleasant visuals, touching story told without words, and relaxing soundtrack. There is an alternate ending that requires players to find all hidden photos and replay the story a second time while keeping an eye out for ways "to think outside the cube". About 2 to 5 hours to complete depending on how often you use the hint system or unlocking achievements. A must try for puzzle enthusiast [10/10]

Puzzle games or sequences in games built around perspective and optical illusions are tricky to do well. You have to direct player view to the patterns you wish them to see, but without robbing them of the eureka moment of finding it, provide them with a goal without turning the process into just solving problems, keeping the joy of discovery intact. Antichamber, Gorogoa or even The Witness (for all of its countless issues) are great examples of titles that do that well, at least for the most part. Moncage isn’t. It’s not bad, but playing it isn’t particularly fun.

The concept is pretty simple – you look at a cube where each of its 5 available sides can show a different scene. Elements of those scenes, however can be interacted with or even combined, if you look at them from a correct perspective. So, say, a ladder on one side and a grate of the same overall form and color on the other side might actually connect between the two sides and change something on the scene. It’s a very simple, but fun mechanic that provides some fun during the first ten or so minutes of the game.

Then it stops being fun. Mostly because the game never provides any understandable goals or reasons for combining elements – you just randomly rotate the perspective, shifting between different zoomed in elements of the scenes, until randomly stumbling upon something that connects and you can proceed further. Most of the time I couldn’t understand why I did what I did even after doing it and understanding what visual story it’s trying to tell. The game also sometimes hides elements that can be interacted with under odd perspective angles with no clear reason as to why that’s there and why interacting should do anything, but until you do, you’re stuck.

I had some fun during the opening moments of the game and it isn’t a terrible execution of the idea. But it’s extremely undercooked, often poorly handled and in the end there are simply far better and more exciting titles that explore similar, if maybe not exactly the same, ideas.

I remember playing the demo a while ago, and I was really excited to see the full release! Unfortunately, my enthusiasm quickly faded. It's a beautiful game, beautifully crafted, clever, but not much fun. After a few puzzles, finding the proper connections felt more tedious than fun: there's not much more to the gameplay than rotating the cube over and over to find matching patterns. Luckily, the hint system allows you to quickly find what you missed.

I'm not sure I'd recommend playing the game. I don't regret playing, but it feels like watching a full playthrough on YouTube would be more satisfying than playing it.