Randal's Monday

Randal's Monday is a dark-comedy adventure game, released in 2014.

Game-play

The game relies on a series of 'guesswork' puzzles.^[1] The game contains references to media such as Portal, The Twilight Zone, The Shawshank Redemption, Back To The Future, Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts, The Office, and Fraggle Rock. The game has different-colored lines of dialogue and emphasis on humor, like classic Lucasarts games out of SCUMM.^[2]

Plot

The plot centers around a character named Randal, a sociopath and kleptomaniac, who becomes stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque loop. The game's dark humor has been compared to that of Hector: Badge of Carnage.

Development

Randal's Monday was the first video game of Nexus Game Studio.^[3]

Jeff Anderson, who played Randal, described the game as a homage to early 2D Lucas Arts titles. While this game contains a character named Randal, it bears no relation to the character from the films Clerks and Clerks II, also named Randal and played by Anderson.^[3]

Critical reception

The game has a Metacritic rating of 57% based on 30 critic reviews.^[4]

PC Gamer wrote "Randal's Monday gets it painfully wrong, mistaking convoluted and crazy for funny and logical to the point of being tedious and infuriating to play even with an in-game walk-through for when you've had enough."^[1] Meanwhile, IGN said "Randal’s Monday has a clever premise that deserves better treatment than it does in this crude, baffling adventure".^[5] GameSpot concluded "Randal's Monday is blind hero worship that ignores decades of design theory and leaves an unpleasant aftertaste thanks to its thoroughly unlikable, homogeneous cast."^[2]

References