A world full of Monsters, foul beasts and cakes of rot and mud, The Secret Monster Society is a charming, silly adventure into the eyes of Blythe, a carefree boy that wants nothing more than to work at The Factory of Dreams, a facility that creates dreams for Humans…However, those dreams are thrown into the blender when a set of mysterious lights fall from the sky, crashing down with a large explosion – It’s up to Blythe to investigate the source of these lights, find the answers to this enigma and follow his aspirations to work at The Factory of Dreams…
As a newbie into the Point & Click genre, this was my first ever Point & Click game, and as such, I feel that this game is a successful introduction into the genre; one thing to note off the bat is that The Secret Monster Society is not a complex, deep-rooted adventure game. It is a short, well-animated experience intended more for young children rather than seasoned adventure game enthusiasts – The game is short, taking only 2 hours to complete 100%, with no truly difficult challenges or tasks (Asides from some un-necessary things such as moving Brandoom from infront of the shelf) within the entire chapter, the game is an easy ride.
The first thing that appealed to me was the voice acting, which in The Secret Monster Society is brilliant; I was honestly expecting worse from the game, but I ended up liking every one of the character’s voice actors – Another noteworthy part of the game is the animation and visual style, which reminded me of a comic or something I would read back in my younger years, over my grandma’s or in the local corner shop – Each element of the game is crisp and sharp with colour, and stands out with vibrancy in every occasion; that given, however, there are a few off-looking animations, such as the transition of Blythe moving forwards towards the side, but these rarely detract from the experience.
However, this game does have some bad moments; for instance, there are various spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes throughout the game; I also believe that the game would’ve benefitted from better quality control and optimisation, as my Surface Pro 3 tablet (Which was more than able to run the game) suffered from the game crashing on loading screens on multiple occasions within 2 hours – Some elements of the story don’t directly make sense either, such as having to move Brandoom from the shelf, or having to cause a stir in the school to get a pair of magical sunglasses.
One final criticism is that the game is small; so small that there are only 10 explorable areas in the game, and for one chapter, nothing really gets achieved in the plot rather than one bad event happens, and you leave the school. This isn’t helped by the constant loading screens, often taking more than 15 seconds to load a simple area, such as the inside of a locker.
For these reasons, I have to suggest that you wait for a price drop, or for the whole collection of chapters to release until you get this game – The game is charming, and full of energy and wonderful characters that could carry the series on their own merit, however I just feel that as a video game, it falls short. Perhaps if the story had explored a different media (Such as a comic or webnovel), would it’ve fared better? Only time would tell.
I would rate The Secret Monster Society a 7/10 as an introduction into the Point & Click genre.
You can pick up The Secret Monster Society here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/495960/
And check out the awesome guys at Deceptive Games here: http://deceptive-games.com/1/