Meg’s Monster A Beautiful Emotional Game that takes you on a Journey towards Home
Meg’s Monster A Beautiful Emotional Game that takes you on a Journey towards Home
Publisher: OdenCat
Developer: OdenCat
Genre:
PEGI: M
Comments:
Before we dive into the game, I want to say Odencat the developer behind Fishing Paradiso and Bear’s Restaurant has always created amazing short story emotional games with beautiful music and loving pixel art graphics. And their recent release, Meg’s Monsters, is one game that shares something similar: a beautifully emotional story and beautiful old-school RPG elements and graphics. Here is the launch trailer for Meg’s Monster:
Story
First, let’s talk about the story of the game and the monster. The story of Meg’s Monster kicks off with Meg, a young child that wakes up somewhere completely unknown to her where trash is littered everywhere. This is just a small part of the underworld map where you will see monsters and settlements. This is the story where Meg begins her journey to start looking around for her mother, and it wasn’t too long until she runs into two monsters that she will befriend.
The first character monster you will meet in the game is a light blue big creature that has a large lobster claw for an arm known as Roy, this creature has no interest in children or even consider them as snacks, but only eat waste known as magic tar, unlike the other monster in the world. This creature reminds me of Sullivan from Monster Inc, and I feel like Roy is a character who has a gentle heart even if he is a big character.
The other character you will that is with Roy is a smaller green monster and Roy’s best friend Golan. Golan is different from Roy and seeing Meg, Golan wants to just take a bite out of her so he can be a happy monster. Golan is a creature I feel who follows the rules of the world and wants to be part of the world, unlike Roy who is curious about what is going on. Both creatures are compatible with each other and create a unique friendship balance.
Both creature characters discover a terrifying secret about the human child Meg, that whenever she cries everything goes red like the world is about to end, so in the end both Creature will try and keep her calm down while embarking on this journey to the surface to reunite Meg with her mother while every other monster in the world wants to eat her.
Throughout the game as the story progress, each character has their own little side stories but they all contribute to the main storyline as well. As the player discovers there will be a time when you need to make some kind of food for the character and at another one you discover more about the secret of the world and their view towards humans.
Gameplay
As you dive into Meg’s Monster and progress through the storyline, you know each character is learning a bit more about each other, so you can see there is a lot of character development evolving. Roy for example learns little by little what it means to be a human from Meg who has taken the role of caring for her and becoming the big brother. As Roy takes care of Meg you can see little by little Roy is being impacted and learning more, and you can see his home which is a lonely empty cave starts to be filled over time with stuff and it becomes more like home. However, this journey of taking Meg home to the surface to be reunited with her mother will not be easy as players will see the party will face opposition from hungry monsters who want to eat Meg and of course the underworld’s high council.
When you get into gameplay, you’ll easily see that there isn’t a level progression system because as you will notice that Roy starts Max level in a way, with a whomping HP of 99,999 during the first battle encounter. This is a system that reminds me of another game where you start at a high level, but then as you progress through the game, you get weaker.
As you go through Meg’s Monster, you will find these toys that you will be able to use that offer great effects like a short-term boost for offense and defense or you can add more health to Meg. Also after each battle, you can gain extra stats that can help you with some of the end-game battles. Some of these can be puzzles or super hard boss battles, just know unlike other RPGs, there are no random encounters as each one of them is required to progress the game.
Conclusion
The game was pretty much everything I wanted in a turn-based classic JRPG, especially with the storytelling and character development. A lot of games focus on the battle system, but for Meg’s Monster, I think the most important part was the relationship between a Monster and a Human who formed this unbreakable loving bond while being targeted by other monsters. Also, love the artwork of the game especially the world design because it feels like a classic old-school RPG back when I was playing on the Gameboy.
Meg’s Monster is a beautiful narrative adventure with a lovely soundtrack, together that can tell a heartwarming story from the perspective of a monster who slowly learns what it is like to be a human and how to become a human through interactions and a growing friendship with a little girl who wants to return to her mother.
A Review copy was provided by the Publisher