Developer: OSome Studio
Publisher: Microids
Platform: PC, Switch (2), PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Tested on: Switch 2
Garfield: Escape from Monday – Review
Garfield is inevitable. Ever since the lovable fat orange cat debuted as a newspaper comic, he’s been the star of various animated shows, movies, memes, an (ironic) fandom, and, of course, video games. The latter is why we’ve gathered here today, as we’re taking a look at Microids’ Garfield: Escape from Monday, a 3D platformer that sees everyone’s favourite feline make his way through Dreamland. But is the game itself a dream to play or a nightmare?
Story
Even if you have only the most cursory knowledge of Garfield, you’ll know his most famous character traits: he hates Mondays and loves lasagna. We imagine that whoever came up with the plot of Escape from Monday scribbled these two things on a piece of paper and went from there, without considering anything else about the fat orange cat. Not that it matters, because the story is all a dream after all. No, really. Escape from Monday begins with Garfield accidentally eating a vegetarian lasagna (the horror) that his owner Jon made, resulting in a veggie-induced nightmare. In Dreamland, Garfield encounters Chef Monday, a cooking show host who came up with the accursed lasagna recipe. The character was created specifically for the game so that a new meaning could be given to Garfield hating Monday, we suppose. The dream version of the Chef attempts to force Garfield to abandon junk food in favour of vegetables, and it’s up to our hero to escape Dreamland.
Graphics
To Escape from Monday’s credit, the game does nail the ‘modern’ Garfield aesthetic, for better or worse. It features a bright, colourful, and toon-shaded aesthetic. The overarching theme of the environments is food: fatty snacks and vegetables are incorporated throughout the different worlds, which cover a wide variety of settings including the Western frontier and pirate islands. Standout environmental details include radishes used as stepping stones and candy laces as rails. Levels are large and visually varied. Contrasting this are character models. These are overly simplistic, though that is at least partially true to the source material. Character animations fall flat, mostly because they are lacking in detail. In terms of visual performance, Escape from Monday delivers a solid frame rate, though we did run into a handful of minor visual bugs, like characters clipping through scenery.
Sound
Audio is perhaps Escape from Monday’s most undercooked element. The game’s soundtrack reminded us of elevator music. While each world has its own theme, the music simply drifts into the background rather than standing out. Ambient audio and environmental sound design are generic, and we wouldn’t be surprised if sound effects were simply recycled from previous Microids games. Now, this kind of lackluster soundscape isn’t something we didn’t expect. Where Escape from Monday’s audio completely lost us was the voice acting, which is all-round terrible. The voice actors for Jon and Chef Monday phoned in their performances and are obviously just there to collect a quick paycheck. Garfield himself is the most egregious example of voice miscasting that we’ve heard in recent years. Instead of the sarcastic and lazy cat we’ve come to know and love, Escape from Monday’s version of Garfield is whiny, high-pitched, and uncharacteristically energetic.
Gameplay
Up until this point, signs have pointed to Escape from Monday being just a lazy, cynical cash grab, released near the end of the year (but conveniently outside of GTA VI’s launch window), relying on IP recognition to entice parents to buy the game as a Christmas gift. Can the gameplay redeem Garfield’s latest video game outing? Well, yes and no. The core gameplay experience of Escape from Monday is that of a 3D collectathon platformer. It’s as paint-by-numbers as it gets in terms of gameplay: you run, jump and fight through levels to reach the end, and defeat a boss at the end of each world. There are even the obligatory minecart and 2D platforming segments, as if the developers had a checklist of things to include in the game. Completing a world grants a distinct “funny” outfit with a unique mechanic attached to it: the turkey costume provides temporary flight, the beachwear outfit allows surfboard riding across liquids, and the cowboy suit gives Garfield a lasso to grapple with.
It may not be in line with his personality, but controlling Garfield is surprisingly fluid and fast-paced. Combined with full free camera control and the fact that the game is aimed at a younger crowd, Escape from Monday is an extremely easy platformer. Death carries virtually no penalty, and checkpoints are exceptionally frequent. Keeping the game’s target audience, being 6-10 year olds, in mind, Escape from Monday is competent mechanically, but older or experienced players will find this lack of challenge outright boring. Even the optional time-trial variants of each level can’t salvage the game.
Completing Escape from Monday won’t take you very long either. It took us roughly eight hours to see the credits roll, and we were playing at a leisurely pace. We could return to Dreamland to sniff out the hidden lasagna slices for 100% completion, but the only reward you get for doing so is that you unlock new furniture to display in the Dreamland version of Jon’s apartment. There is no core gameplay purpose or progression advantage to doing this otherwise. For €29.99 (digital) /€39.99 (physical), we honestly expected better.
Conclusion
Our bar for Escape from Monday wasn’t all that high to begin with, and yet the game still managed to disappoint us. We understand and appreciate that we’re not the target audience for the game, but being for young kids shouldn’t be an excuse for delivering an undercooked, generic platformer. Adding insult to injury, the game doesn’t even seem to understand its protagonist as a character, stripping him of his established personality. We won’t outright discourage parents from buying Escape from Monday for their young’uns, but there are better options out there, even from Microids themselves.
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