Monomals

This is one of the best games Apple Arcade has to offer, even if you don’t care for the music-making part of it, which is pretty much optional. It reminds me a lot of old-school 2-D Sega games, bursting with color and creativity in ways never before explored. If you enjoy water levels in other platform games you’ll probably like this. I couldn’t really get into the music side of things, but it’s nice that it’s there. Though I found the music submission concept confusing. It makes it seem like you can listen to and rate songs submitted by other players and have other players listen to your song, but really it just arbitrarily gives your song a “chart position” based on arbitrary mystery criteria with no clear benefit to the player. I honestly wouldn’t have bothered with it if I’d understood that this was all it offered. I’d probably be upset if I’d gone to the trouble of composing an actually good song and then couldn’t find a way to share it with others. I don’t really understand why the song has to be at least 20 seconds long if no one will ever hear it.

Let’s be perfectly clear: Monomals is absolutely worth your time regardless of your musical talent. The two parts of the game, the Monomal fishing and the music creation, work wonderfully in tandem with each other. Every time I fish up a new instrument, I’m eager to test it out in the music maker. It creates a real sense of anticipation, wondering how that next Monomal will spice up your tunes. The controls are nice and snappy, both with the touch controls and with a traditional controller (I use an Xbox One controller). The visuals are an absolute delight, and the animations match the bubbly colorful vibe of the whole game. You can definitely enjoy this game without even touching the music maker part of the game. That being said, the music maker is where I’m having the most fun with this game, despite my lack of musical talent. The maker is actually a very robust music tracker disguised as a toy. The bright colors and cheery monomals really encourage you to tinker and play around without being intimidating. With 3 DJ characters, each with their own 7 unique instruments, Monomals really encourages creativity while not overwhelming people who have no idea what they’re doing (like me). All in all, this is a really fantastic game. You owe it to yourself to check it out, even if you have no interest in making music. I highly recommend checking it out.

Beautiful platformer with a nice flare and friendly vibe. I have just started playing but I am really enjoying it. Optional music creation feature that is really cool. The even have a chart list for people who want to publicize their creations, although no one has posted any unfortunately. Anything requiring multiplayer on Apple Arcade seems to be lacking. Of all the multiplayer I have tried except for the LEGO brawl game I was never paired with someone. Wow of topic but This game is a diamond in the rough for Apple Arcade games that while plenty few stand above the rest. Cough... cough.... if only games like Outlander which is another game I enjoy from the Apple Arcade and this was available regularly on the Apple store I would just purchase them separately to play. Cough... cough.... Apple Arcade is not worth it for the few games that are decent to play.... cough cough...

The presentation of monomals is far beyond most of what I’ve seen on the Apple Arcade, instead of textureless minimalist layervault color schemes and slow placing, Monomals stands out by being bright, crisp and energetic. There’s a lot of careful thought between transitions in menus down to music morphing in real time between characters. All the levels toy with the game mechanics. The game itself is polished and plays great on touch controls. It’s not anything groundbreaking but serves it’s purpose. Oh and the unlocklockables? They enable new sounds in the game’s music sequencer. Most of my gripes come at the expense of the music maker as I desperately want copy and paste group selections and the ability to zoom in and out, (for song navigation and do 1/32 notes) as it’s surprisingly decent. There’s understandable limitations, like the ability to only put a single note at a time by instrument, and the effects are per group and not instrument, and offer only a slider without any other controls like delay timing or type of reverb. There’s a looming promised update that’ll add in song sharing, rankings, and more sounds. I’d love to see this game expanded on as it’s different.

This is a very unique game. I have never seen a game has such feature combination. And the combination is a pretty good one. You will have an adventure under the water to seek the hidden “instruments”. The process of the adventure is pretty fun. You will encounter with different type of enemies, puzzles, hidden locations. The satisfaction after beating a level is tremendous. But my favorite part is the music composing. I am so delighted to see the “instrument” I have just collected can be converted into a part of the music. The more I have, the more complex ton I can compose, sky is the limit. Together with the amazing graphics and the high fit and finish quality, this game can easily be one of the top game in Apple Arcade.