The Throwback Nostalgia of Monochrome Heights

As a child, my favorite type of video games (and the only ones I played) were platformers. I (and my parents) staunchly opposed “Traditional” video games, which I (and my parents) believed to be filled with violence and kissing and swearing—but most importantly, they cost money, and required downloading something to the computer! How frightening.

Browser platformers were different. Platformer games had none of the violence my parents might object to, required no downloading, and were free to play. As such, I essentially had free rein. I adored tackling the various Flash games on Nick Jr.’s website, along with Playmobil and Lego platformers as well. I became a skillful manipulator of the arrow keys and spacebar, conquered my fears of patrolling enemies, and rejoiced in my ability to get all (or at least most) of the points in each level—whether they be gears, bricks, or panda toys.

Over the years, I aged and moved on. Flash got discontinued. I got a Steam account. I would still dream sometimes about my old platformers, but I didn't touch a platform game for years. Then came the chance to review Monochrome Heights, released on Steam on October 7^th, developed by Patrick Knisely’s company, One Frog Games.

Patrick Kniseley had previously worked in a variety of creative industries, such as puppetry, podcasting, sketch comedy, and many others, before releasing his debut, Monochrome Heights. The game was billed as “Traditional tough-as-nails platforming meets a novel phase mechanic where players must swap between black and white to avoid hazards and land on platforms.” I was greatly intrigued, especially by footage of the demo.

When I picked up Monochrome Heights to review for SUPERJUMP, I thought it’d be a throwback to my early gaming days, and the skills I picked up years ago would come in handy now. I forgot one key thing:

I’m terrible at platform games.

The reason I haven’t touched a platform game in years is that I have money and a computer and freedom; freedom to play Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto and Thief, freedom to play games that have three dimensions and voice acting, and above all else, no challenging jumping from here to there.

Monochrome Heights is a fantastic game, with such a simple yet fun twist: Aside from traditional platform mechanics and hazards, a primary mechanic of the game is phasing. The player can phase between black and white, allowing them to stand on similarly-colored platforms—they simply go right through the color they are not currently in. By phasing from black to white, protagonist Happy can scale obstacles, dodge enemies, and avoid traps.

The themes of the game are rich and timely, tackling matters like transhumanism, consciousness and self-awareness, and the place of robots in society. The plot itself revolves around a robot, Happy, trying to stop another robot, Layla, who sees liberating robotkind as a worthy goal in a world ravaged by climate change. To stop the enemy, Happy must ascend Layla’s tower, using phasing powers while avoiding enemies and encountering other robots along the way.

The plot is fascinating and the gameplay challenging. But I am terrible at platformers. I struggled with Adobe Flash games made for young children, and Monochrome Heights is “Tough-as-nails.” The game itself is fantastic. It requires considerable rewiring of the brain to acclimate to the simple notion that “Robot=black, robot stand on black, fall through white; Robot=white, robot stand on white, fall through black.” Nevertheless, once I started to get the hang of it, it became immensely satisfying.

I was able to beat the second level. I was phasing from black to white in mid-air, zipping back and forth, then dying and taking things slowly—both options suggested by the game: “Tight, simple controls that allow players to blaze forward with speed and momentum, or take it slow and patiently progress.” Watching Happy forge through platforming challenges that had stumped me ten minutes prior was like an injection of dopamine into my soul. Wait, is the soul affected by dopamine? There’s one for the metaphysicists.

The nearly two-hour-long soundtrack, by video essayist and composer Bent Neatley, is sublime. Even as I racked up triple-digit deaths each level, the soundtrack was there, gassing me up and encouraging me to move along. Each level had its own leitmotif that imbued it with charm and kept things fresh.

In terms of complexity, the story itself isn’t the stuff of the Mahabharata, but it was still quite engaging. Happy has a mysterious relationship to the archnemesis Layla, and Layla’s motives are not entirely black-and-white. Each named robot has its own unique, equally simple and cute design—even Layla, who boasts a mop of black hair. (Hair? Do robots have hair? Can robots have hair? Should robots have hair?)

The game has a singular flaw that stands out to me: If Happy phases while touching the opposite color, Happy dies and gets reassembled at the nearest checkpoint. On numerous occasions, Happy must jump from one black square to one white square above. On such occasions, the blocks are spaced so far apart that it requires near-pixel-perfect timing to get on top of the platform above without dying. While I could easily move on from all the other frustrations, Happy’s jumping skills in that department irked me. (Can robots train and upgrade their skills at the robot gym?)

The challenge actually made me nostalgic in a way. Once I realized what I was in for and tempered my frustration, I felt a sort of fondness for my archnemeses of childhood: The Snappity-Snap Fish in Wubbzy’s Underwater Adventure; the heated vents in Junkbot; Francine in Prankster Planet 2. This was what I had been training for the whole time: To stop Layla.

In the end, Monochrome Heights is a fantastic platformer, a satisfying debut for One Frog Games. The next planned game by OFG, Detective Mane, is a cozy mystery revolving around the theft of a parallelogram, investigated by the eponymous lion, Detective Leonardo Mane. Patrick Knisley and his studio are going places, unlike me, trying to play Monochrome Heights.

For myself, I am forced to paraphrase Charles Farrar Browne: “For people who are good at the kind of video games like Monochrome Heights, Monochrome Heights is just the kind of video game such people are good at.”