Midnight Monitor: Anomaly Watch

They created Steam achievements for content that is not even released yet. This is such a terrible thing for developers to do. Toggle them to hidden until the actual content is actually released. They have been implemented for 5 months and no content to go with it. Overall decent game, but its asking for way too many playthroughs on each level for some of the achievments. They ask you to beat the game 25 times on hard mode on each level. They are asking for too much time to be invested for what the game is.. This makes the game feel longer but there are not enough unique anomalies to warrant 25 playthroughs on hard mode, especially if you've already seen most of them on your first 10 playthroughs on normal mode. They start to repeat and its boring to sit there and click the same things while waiting. Fun yes, for a few hours per level, but that's about where the fun ends. I do not wish to play every level for 20+ hours each to see the same stuff.

Leaving this review is difficult. I wasn't sure if I wanted to leave a negative or positive review. Ultimately, I realize I enjoy playing the game and at the price tag, it's fairly worth it. Even more so if bought on sale. If you enjoy games like this and Observation Duty, this is a nice one to have in your library. It's enjoyable, though there are a few things wrong with the game that I feel I have to add. For starters, I'd like to know what the devs were thinking when they came up with the steam achievements. Majority of them center around playing a single map for many hours. With only two maps to pick from, the burn out is real. Second, with dark mode enabled it's absolutely impossible to see some of the anomalies. This should be fixed. If it was intended, it's unfair and ridiculous. I don't want to GUESS that something might be there. Several typos through out the game. Small, but annoying. Confusing anomalies. I've spent way too much time trying to figure out what to select. The T.V monitor should come with some kind of disclaimer that it isn't an anomaly. Despite the issues I have with the game, it's not a BAD game. I have fun playing it, even if I get annoyed from time to time to how unfair it feels sometimes. (seriously, every game I play it tells me there is something missing in the kids bedroom. I feel like I'm being gaslit here, because I never SEE anything actually missing.) The price tag is reasonable, not stupidly inflated. Game is still worth giving a shot.

This is a great game as it is, perhaps the best game in the genre outside of I'm on Observation Duty. I love the level designs and anomalies. Unfortunately, the game seems a little stuck and the developer is prone to long absences. There is a third level in the game, there are achievements for it, but it has yet to release and I'm not sure it ever will. I hope so. If you're coming back to the genre now that IoOD8 is out, give this one a try once you're done with that--as long as the information above doesn't bother you.

This game is yet another entry into the reporting anomalies genre of horror and has quickly become one of my favourites. I love hidden object horror and therefore played quite a few of them. This one stood out to me because of the following aspects: 1. Currently you'll be faced with two different houses/levels and each plays differently. Each level also comes with 4 modes (normal, hardmode, dark mode, black n white mode). You can mix it up however you like, which makes for many different challenges. Furthermore, there are still 2 more levels coming up. 2. The second House comes with lots of customisation options like changing the amount of cameras. In my opinion this is what also makes it beginner-friendly and less overwhelming, if needed. 3. This game also comes with lots of achievements, quite a few of those linked to the different modes, that will motivate you to challenge yourself and it is definitely doable. After 41 hours I reached 100% completion and still enjoyed it. 4. Even after hours of playing I kept encountering new anomalies and only saw few bugs/glitches. 5. As of right now, there are no guides that list the different anomalies, yet. Despite this and my AD(H)D impacting my observation skills, I got good at the game after just a few hours. Because of this, I consider this game rather ND-friendly and will gladly recommend it to other neurodivergent people. 6. The game is LGBTQIA+ friendly. I loved seeing that trans pride flag wiggle the whole time. All in all this is an [b]AMAZING[/b] game, especially considering the current price tag. You will get a lot right away and over time you will get even more as stated by the dev. For the completionists: 100% is absolutely doable, but will take time and buying one DLC (Halloween Forever) to accomplish it. For my fellow AD(H)Ders: Go for it. Much dopamine to gain here.

personally, i havent been getting a lot of enjoyment from midnight monitor: anomaly watch. granted, the game is in early access, so it may be improved as time goes on. ill start with the positives of the game. theres a few different game modes that add some decent variety. hard mode, which increases the spawn rate and amount of anomalies, length of the night, and you can no longer pause. in the modern house, theres black and white mode, which removes all color. in the neighborhood house, theres nightcam mode, which enables a night vision-like overlay to the camera. lastly, theres dark mode. this shuts off the lights, and all you have is a flashlight to detect anomalies. these different modes provide a decent challenge. as of now, theres only two maps, the modern house and the neighborhood house, and theres plans to add more in the future. theres also a few toggles, which are pretty nice. on the neighborhood house, you can toggle how many cameras you want to see, though this feature is removed on hard mode. theres also an option for curated anomalies, which is supposed to guarantee a variety anomalies. now, onto the more negative aspects. i absolutely hate how the toggles and such arent universal across both the modern house and the neighborhood house. on the modern house, you can toggle curated anomalies, intro/tutorial, privacy/streamer mode, dark mode, black and white mode, and hard mode. exiting back to main menu is the "return to menu" button, with "quit" below that. on the neighborhood house, a new toggle is introduced, allowing you to toggle between 4-10 cameras. you get the same toggles of curated anomalies, intro/tutorial, privacy/streamer mode, dark mode, and hard mode. however, this map has nightcam mode instead of black and white mode. both are slightly different, but theyre relatively similar, so im not sure why its not the same mode for both maps. the last weird change is that now exiting to the main menu is called "shutdown sequre os" and quitting is not "quit to desktop". again, im not sure why this isnt the same across both maps. furthermore, the in-game pause menus are also different. the modern house is laid out as "resume game, graphics settings, end session, and quit". the neighborhood house is set up as "resume, settings, reset, quit to desktop". why these are different despite performing the same functions is beyond me. the in-game report menus also vary quite a bit between each map, but this isnt as a big of an issue for me, since each house has different types of anomalies. another note with the curated anomalies toggle. ive had that toggle on the entire time ive been playing the game, but i seem to get a lot of repeat anomalies despite this. the most variety i get is in imagery anomalies, but most others are still pretty repetitive. theres also several visual bugs ive noticed, most of which are prominent in the neighborhood house. when using the dark mode toggle, the flashlight tends to reflect certain items like posters/images. it often appears like an anomaly at first glance. some anomalies also clip through walls or warp perspectives a bit when they shouldnt. a good example of this is the pumpkin king in the halloween dlc. theres often a lot of blur and warping in the rooms adjacent to the front entrance whenever he shows up. speaking of the halloween dlc, its god awful. basically, its just the free halloween event, but if you want to spend $2 USD, you can have the halloween event year-round. it doesnt really change all that much, just makes things more "halloween-y" and changes a lot of colors to orange and black. the event/dlc only affects the neighborhood house, and theres no guarantee that itll be changed to affect the modern house and/or future houses. i personally only bought it for the halloween related achievements, but i highly recommend just waiting for the halloween event to roll around. lastly, ill talk about achievements. most of the achievements are just really unnecessary. some of them make sense-- achievements for playing on each level, using each difficulty modifier, etc. but some of them are just ridiculous. theres two achievements for playing each house for 2, 5, and 10 hours, correctly reporting 1000 anomalies, experiencing 1000 anomalies, beat hard mode 20 times in the modern house, etc. these are incredibly annoying to get, and they really dont have a purpose, nor do they need to be this difficult. i understand that developer was using this game as a way to learn coding/programming and that the game is still in early access, but theres quite a few problems within the game that need to be fixed before i can find myself rating this game positively.

I feel like it uses ai in many things but especially the art. I know how I feel about that so downvote.

Really well made and great fun, i just wish that you could pause the game though, kinda sucks to lose a whole night of progress at 4:45 am because the doorbell rang. EDIT: i'm an idiot and didn't realise using the maximum number of cameras auto-enables hard mode, maybe bigger checkboxes on the menu for us idiots lmao

mother cacalands

TRANS FLAG

I played the sequel or successor to Midnight Monitor before playing the OG. I vastly preferred Midnight Monitor Aldercourt even though it was less horror, more silly and fun. Midnight Monitor felt very difficult in comparison with some super sneaky anomalies. The Halloween DLC had to be the best part of this game, the anomalies were much more obvious, there was more horror than in the base game, and the enemy you had to flash to scare away added a fun new gameplay element. Not a bad anomaly spotting game but one of the more difficult. Having spent so long getting all achievements I was disappointed to see that a number of the achievements are for a new map or level which hasn’t been released yet. I hope this will be released soon as I will definitely revisit the game then. [B]Pros[/B] - Halloween DLC was sick - Some horror elements [B]Cons[/B] - Very sneaky anomalies made it frustrating and too easy to lose - Not enough horror - Frustrating gameplay - Impossible to 100% due to some achievements being linked to a new level or map which hasn’t been released yet - Hope this game hasn’t been abandoned by dev [B]Overall Rating: 6/10[/B]