A Crayon-Drawing Of A Sliding Puzzle Game That Needs Filling In
The thing that will stick with me most about Monty the Play Bear is its unhinged soundtrack. I’d describe it as rockabilly tunes played through a Fisher Price record player. It’s mad and catchy, and you can bet that I am humming it right now.
The second most memorable thing about Monty the Play Bear is the toy-spotting on the backgrounds. I got to enjoy pointing at some of the toys I owned when I was a kid, sketchily presented around the sides of the game screen. It made me fuzzy and nostalgic.
Which is all faintly damning for the rest of Monty the Play Bear. As a sliding puzzle-meets-sokoban, it’s absolutely fine; it even tinkers with some new mechanics to see what might happen. But mostly it slipped through my fingers like kinetic sand, making very little impression and lasting very little time indeed.
An Art-Style That Makes Sense While It Disappoints
Monty the Play Bear’s first impressions aren’t great. The 2D art is so sketchy and unformed that it starts to have an impact on the game’s usability. You might not realise from the screenshots, but the darker squares in the grids are actually walls. If you slide Monty into them, he will stop. But they’re way too subtle, and on more than one occasion I thought I had arrived at a solution, only to hit a wall and curse.
The sketchiness in the presentation goes beyond the walls. Monty the Play Bear is clearly going for a crayon, ‘scribbled by a toddler’ effect, but while it’s appropriate it’s also on the ugly side. The sprites also joggle about, like a limited-frame stop-motion, which gets old after a while. But hey – there’s always that earworm of a soundtrack.
Moving away from the graphical complaints, Monty the Play Bear is a reasonably textbook sliding puzzle. Your aim is to get Monty to the toy castle at the end of the level, and that involves sliding around the playroom. Monty, you see, is a ball, and balls roll. You’re rolling him in cardinal directions until he hits one of those slightly too-transparent walls. Then he stops, and you can roll him in a new direction, hopefully closer to that toy castle.
My Kingdom For An Undo Button
After a few levels, a new complaint begins to form. There is a Retry button in Monty the Play Bear, but there’s no Undo button to be seen. We tried every button press, but it was nowhere to be found. We’ve played so many sliding puzzle games, and an Undo button has become a bit of a table-stake. We expect it as default. To play a game where one isn’t included, and an accidental button press cannot be rewound, feels profoundly odd and frustrating.
The levels are simple enough, though, and most of the time you can just tap a button to go back from whence you came. And for the first few levels, the sliding puzzles are entirely fine and no-thrills.
But Monty the Play Bear has a couple of cards to play. The first is LEGO bricks. By sliding into these guys, they will shuffle one square into the direction that they were pushed. It tends to mean a pattern of slide and push, slide and push, as you nudge the brick into the orientation you need to reach the castle. You will loop round to reach the right side of the brick and complete the level.
Planes, Trains And Automated Arrows
After the LEGO comes toy cars. These are much the same as the LEGO brick – you slide into them to move them – but instead of shunting one square, they drive forward until they hit a wall. In effect, they act like Monty and his movement. But you can use the cars to block spikes (toy jacks) and create walls.
Finally, there are arrows which work exclusively with the cars. Push a vehicle into them and it will bounce from arrow to arrow like it’s on a conveyor belt. You can sit back and watch the chaos as the car rotates around the grid (and through Monty, if needed) to finally rest somewhere useful. If there are arrows, you can assume they will lead somewhere positive.
These are all welcome additions to the usual – and overly familiar – sliding puzzle formula. Without them, we might have slipped into a coma. The later levels use them well in combination, and you have to be wise enough to spot the path to a solution. Often, reverse-engineering a path from the toy castle is the best approach. What’s the best angle of approach, and which of the blocks or cars will get you there?
Second-Hand Toys, Rather Than New
But while these additional mechanics are welcome, they’re also not revolutionary. There are dozens of games that mix sliding puzzles with sokoban, so the blocks and cars merely move Monty the Play Bear into that territory. A straightforward sliding puzzle game becomes a slide-sokoban hybrid, like Slide Viking, the Sokobear series and so many more. It’s not all that new.
It leaves Monty the Play Bear in a precarious position. It offers some decent sliding puzzle/sokoban levels, but we’ve seen most of them before. So, what does it have to distinguish it? Some wobbly art and a lack of an Undo button. It’s not the heartfelt recommendation that you would hope for.
If we lived in a Toy Story universe, I would worry for Monty the Play Bear. He’s a bit odd to look at, and his sliding-puzzle tricks aren’t that special any more. Unfortunately, he’s destined for the dusty bottom of the toybox.
Important Links
Think Ahead And Help Monty The Play Bear Reach The Castle – https://www.thexboxhub.com/think-ahead-and-help-monty-the-play-bear-reach-the-castle/
Buy from the Xbox Store, Optimised for Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/monty-the-play-bear-xbox-series/9mt8pb4wxdmn
Buy for Xbox One – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/monty-the-play-bear-xbox-one/9n0xnzggx7n7
Buy for PC – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/monty-the-play-bear-windows/9nfhr3b7545s
