Monochrome World Review

Can you imagine a world devoid of colour? If you have achromatopsia (aka complete colour blindness), then you would experience this on a daily basis. And if you happen to be a cute and curious raindrop falling in a Monochrome World, you are also experiencing this colourless phenomenon.

Monochrome World is a 3D action puzzle game that involves taking control of a raindrop, imbuing it with your favourite colour, and rolling around in an adorable form to spread an abundance of colour throughout each level.

As you progress through the game, you will collect coins to purchase both necessary – and frivolous – upgrades. Necessary upgrades are things like the ability to jump (B button), dash (Y button), and slow time for a bit (X button). You can also spend your coins on cosmetic upgrades such as wings, flowers, or colour variations for your raindrop. These add-ons don’t affect the gameplay in any way, of course, but they do provide that extra ‘cute factor.’

The graphics are nice enough; you’ll traverse a black-and-white puzzle board floating in space, complete with a hint of a grey and a colourless city far below. The music is stellar, and in my opinion, it is perfect rainy-day music: chill and calming. I would just leave my game on the level-select menu for a bit simply to enjoy the vibe. 

Generally speaking, the gameplay is smooth, but you really have to take into account your momentum as you progress through each level. I found myself frustrated and dead several times when I was trying to get around a tight corner with a spike trap on it; if you are not going fast enough, the timed spike will get you, but if you are going too fast, you’ll careen off the edge. 

Monochrome World has a good pace, starting off easy enough and progressively getting more difficult with new challenges being added. At first, your only task is to colour all the tiles, but after that, the game starts adding things like spikes in the floor, electric robots that chase you down, wind turbines that try to blow you off the level, and platforms that break and fall if you stay on them for too long.

Here’s one thing I did find frustrating: Oftentimes, while viewing a stage, the camera angles were a little strange, and as such, I couldn’t see exactly where I was going to land. For example, there are platforms that will bounce you very high to help you reach somewhere new, but the only way to tell where you’re going to land is by watching your shadow on the level. However, it shoots you up so high that I honestly had to manoeuvre my raindrop and hope I was sort of close since you can only see your shadow when you’re close to landing. 

I think Monochrome World could have benefited from the ability to control the camera angles a bit. Being able to see my raindrop-tanooki from directly above or below could have mitigated a lot of frustrating viewpoints I found myself struggling to overcome. 

All in all, Monochrome World is a pretty fun puzzle game that can be quite challenging at times. I liked customizing my raindrop: making it a cute red fox or a pink kitty made my heart smile. It’s honestly quite cheap, and if you’re a fan of the genre, then I would recommend this one for your library.