Always Sometimes Monsters

Perhaps the most interesting thing about {Always Sometimes Monsters} is its voice. This is a game about the choices that exist in the grey expanse that rests between right and wrong, but it's never so crude that it outright judges you for the decisions you make along the way. Vagabond Games has created an RPG that asks tough questions, and frames much of the fallout caused by your answers against a poignant and thought-provoking backdrop.

{Always Sometimes Monsters} is a top-down role-playing game with fully explorable urban environments, where story progression is triggered via branching dialogue instead of more traditional turn-based combat. It's as interesting as it is enjoyable, however, one thing that surfaced time and again was the pacing of the story, which felt unbearably slow and frustrating in some parts. The same story could have been told in near half the time. A single playthrough is littered with mini-games, and these too suck the pace and momentum out of the whole (though these lulls are more purposeful. Like {Cart Life}, ASM wants you to understand the drudgery of menial labour). There's very little challenge in the game, other than perhaps the test of one's endurance, something that every player must either pass or fail.

Those who pass, those who become emotionally invested in their characters and the NPCs met en route to the conclusive act, will play through a unique and emotionally challenging story about a struggling writer and their journey across America to find and confront their lost love. It's not an original story when considered across the broader world of fiction, but in terms of videogames, it's unlike nearly anything we've ever played before. ASM's personable identity is the glue that holds it all together, and the reason that long after our monitor was shut down and the office door closed, we were still thinking about the story we were experiencing and the characters we were meeting along the way.

The visuals have the trademark stamp of a game built in RPG Maker, but the backgrounds that house the action are characterfully drawn and distinct. Movement is clunky and slow, getting from A to B takes a while, and much time is spent traipsing between objectives. The mini-games that you're forced to endure on occasion are slightly frustrating at best, and thoroughly boring at worst. Sometimes there's the odd glitch or a line of dialogue that makes no sense. Getting to the good stuff means side-stepping a few issues, but it's worth it, because when it's all said and done, {Always Sometimes Monsters} tells an oddly captivating story that inspired us to soldier through the slower moments.

It starts off at a party. You can choose your character and the object of their affections, and there's room here for most tastes and preferences. Vagabond offers an inclusive environment for us to play in, and the choices made will impact the overall experience. We started off playing as a female character, and had a notably different experience until we accidentally saved over our game and had to start again, this time as goateed white male.

At the aforementioned party we meet a publisher, who signs up our character - an upcoming writer - for a book deal. Cue toasts to the success and the future. A year later and the book deal is on the ropes, your publisher is ready to walk, your partner has long left, the rent is overdue and you're about to be made homeless. The cherry on top of your predicament; your ex is getting married and an invite sits in your mailbox.

Being made homeless by your landlord sends you on a journey across the country, where along the way you encounter a myriad of strange characters, making the best out of ambiguous moral conundrums as you go. It's not always subtle, in fact ASM is often glaringly predictable, but it's saying something new, and for that it must be commended. Another thing that needs commendation is the soundtrack, which is brilliant in a way that's comparable to the offering made in {Hotline Miami} (a game that, incidentally, gets referenced here).

We're not going to go into any details with regards to the scenarios that you'll discover along the way, for that would be to spoil them needlessly, but the game drops you into a variety of different situations. Often you're forced to choose between the lesser of two evils, other times you must weigh up personal gain against the needs of those around you, making decisions based on different social and economic factors.

The biggest economic factor is the money in your pocket, and the food that ends up in your belly. ASM is a game that keeps you hungry throughout, whether that's by the slow drip drip drip of story, or via the more literal rumbling in your stomach. There's a stamina bar that must be replenished by consuming food and drink, and it purposefully hovers at the lower end of the scale the whole time. Vagabond Dog wants to keep you constantly on edge with regards to where your next meal is coming from. (This sometimes leads to frustration, like when you've just eaten three sandwiches and you're told to eat a meal before you go to sleep lest you don't wake up - we actually died in our sleep once, though we learned our lesson and made sure to find the money for a meal every night thereafter and didn't die again despite the warnings.)

The various strands of narrative are woven together in such a way that you'll get to see a variety of different perspectives during your journey. We encounter faith and immorality, challenge addiction and corruption, experience sexism and racism, and clash with characters whose motivations are polar opposite to our own. There's flashbacks that reveal our character's history, offering insight to the most significant relationships. There's no clearcut moral path, and often innocuous decisions will have significant results. Scratching under the surface and chatting to NPCs offers additional depth, allowing Vagabond Dog to paint their picture with increasingly vivid colours.

You'll spend the entire game either sleeping rough on the streets, or camping on the sofas of friends and acquaintances. ASM offers a view of life through a different filter, where NPCs will tell you to get away from them, where characters will try to tempt you onto the path of least resistance via morally dubious choices, where your actions will have consequences not necessarily for you, but for those you meet on the way. The game's shift of perspective, and the unique voice that comes with it, allows Vagabond Dog to paint a very particular picture, to ask questions to their audience that perhaps they won't have been asked within this medium before.

As such, ASM is a resounding success. It follows in the footsteps of similarly themed titles by throwing focus on the human condition, but does so in a way that's more immediately accessible than other games (like, for example, {Cart Life}). That's not to say it's not without flaws, because as we've mentioned, the pacing felt misjudged at times. But even an overly long walk through the streets of Vagabond Dog's world isn't enough to tarnish our feelings towards the whole. {Always Sometimes Monsters} is powerful and affecting title, and if you've any interest in experiencing games that fire questions instead of bullets, then you'd do well to check it out.