I hate to dunk on a $2 game, but sometimes it can't be helped; this game somehow manages to feel even cheaper than its price may suggest. Problems are numerous, and pervade the entire experience; I'll have to go into detail for each aspect of the game.
ART DIRECTION
The first thing I noticed was the bizarre model for the "pistol". It looks like a plasma rifle from Fallout 3. The shotgun looks like it came from Roblox. The game generally has a very Roblox/Asset flip aesthetic; the enemy models are extremely simple and use textures that don't mesh with each other or the environment. What is this supposed to convey? How am I supposed to feel? There's a loose sense that I'm in Id Software style hell, but it feels more like the sense of hell you get from scrolling a little too far on itch.io and finding the real bottom-of-the-barrel stuff thrown together in the hopes of making a quick $5 from the poor sucker that gives it a shot. Doom isn't exactly the highest of art either, but the games all have a coherent look, with weapons, environments, and monsters that all want you to feel like you're in a specific place and time with genuine creatures. The lighting is also extremely flat and uninspired... and we're just getting started.
GAMEFEEL
The fundamental mechanic of any shooter game is, of course, the shooting. Games can't actually put a gun in your hands, so they have to utilize the limited feedback of sound and sight to suggest the feeling of holding and firing a gun to the player. Take Doom II for example. The Super Shotgun is among the most exalted guns of video gaming due to the animations, art, and sound design; the texturing uses shading and light to provide a sense of depth and material, the animations provide a sense of clunky physicality, and the sounds fill in the visual gaps of the bullets CLUNKing into the barrel and the heavy thud of the projectile's impact. I don't remember anything about the guns of Monument other than my bewilderment as to their art direction.
SOUND
They forgot to add sounds to the enemies. I turned up the music a bit (it was very quiet when I started the game) so this coooould be a mixing problem?? Like, if there ARE enemy footsteps, maybe they just need to actually balance the sounds of the game with the music effectively? Regardless, hulking melee enemies that should have stepped with heavy thuds were able to delicately creep up to me and chomp my back without making a peep. What sounds I did hear couldn't be attributed to a specific enemy; there was no correlation between what sound an enemy might have made and its visual design. I might as well have played on mute.
MUSIC
As a musician myself, this is probably the biggest tragedy of this game to me. I know I compared it to an asset flip earlier, but I'm not actually sure that it is one; the developer uploaded early concept art a few years ago to celebrate 9 years of the game being available, which speaks to a level of effort most asset flips don't aspire to. I wish the game looked as good as those sketches... regardless, I can tell an actual human played the guitar on the soundtrack to this game and I wish they hadn't. It's very aimless playing. The issues with mixing persist here as well; the guitars dominate each track, the bass is inaudible, and the drums are a suggestion. This sounds like a 14 year old made it on their iPhone.
Overall, this game is a mess. It has no direction, it lacks the campy sense of fun that the original Id titles had, and it looks like ♥♥♥♥. Spend your $2 on a candy bar.
One last note: the teleport gun does look like a cool idea. If only the game was good enough to keep me playing long enough to use it...
Final last note: I was harsh in this review, but I do hope the developer keeps making games and lives a wonderful life. Even though I feel like this one was a bit of a nightmare, every game is a miracle and I'm glad people put so much work into them.
