For a character with no discernible skills other than a passion for eating and sleeping, Garfield has a surprisingly long lineage of video games, traceable to the Atari 2600. Recent tie-ins have simply plonked Garfield and company into generic kart racers and party mini-game collections. Setting sights far higher, Escape from Monday is a 3D platformer from OSome Studio, creators of the surprisingly good The Smurfs – Mission Vileaf. A much more appealing proposition, I’m sure you’ll agree. I don’t think anyone could stomach another calamitous kart racer.
Funnily enough, Escape from Monday draws from the two things Garfield is most famous for. Corny TV star Chef Monday has created a new vegetable filled lasagna, the very thought of which turns Garfield’s meat-loving stomach. After settling for a nap, he finds himself trapped in a dreamworld overseen by Chef Monday. The only way to escape from his tormentor is to seek lasagnas – meat-filled, of course – with the logic being that only a full belly will wake Garfield up. It just so happens that his appetite is insatiable, resulting in the need to collect hundreds of the meaty treats throughout this adventure’s modest 6-7 hour duration.
Surprisingly, Escape from Monday is fully voice-acted, with dialogue not just present during cutscenes but also peppered throughout. Chef Monday’s accent is hard to pinpoint, avoiding the trope of being either Italian or French. Instead, they come across as a peculiar mixture of European ethnicities. Perhaps it was felt best not to stereotype. Garfield meanwhile sounds very different to past interpretations, in the sense that the voice actor isn’t simply trying to imitate Bill Murray or even Chris Pratt. It’s a suitable enough performance for a casual video game, but wouldn’t fly for a show, lacking those important dulcet tones. Jon, Liz, Nermal and co fair well, and dialogue is largely entertaining, with Garfield noting that it feels like he’s trapped in a video game and consequently referring to the presence (and occasional lack thereof) of tropes.
Garfield controls well, with a similar move set to that found in the recent Bubsy 4D – including the ability to pounce and roll into a ball, with rolling proving invaluable when tackling stages in time trial mode. He endearingly leans slightly to the side when running in circles and can cling to walls to perform wall jumps and recover. Despite his lethargic nature, enemies can be directly attacked using a weighty kick. Enemies – a mixture of cartoony foodstuffs, including tomatoes, marshmallows, and kernel-firing corn – can be knocked into one another too, killing multiple at once and keeping encounters pleasingly swift.
Supplementing skills are three different costumes, unlocked at a rate of one per world. Much to Garfield’s chagrin, the first is a turkey outfit that simply allows him to double jump and float. It also comes into play during a side-viewed ‘Flappy Cat’ bonus level. The second outfit is a quintessentially ‘90s surfer, giving the ability to ride over water and grind rails, with stages in this region featuring lots of distant areas to grind. Lastly, the third outfit is a cowboy, complete with a lasso. The lasso not only allows rampaging eggplants to be ridden and steered into walls of crates but also doubles as a grappling hook. Later, there are pork chops to wrangle and steer along narrow ledges as they haphazardly jolt around, introducing a new late-game challenge.
The three worlds are all food themed (a cheese-smothered primer, a candy land with a pirate motif, and a barbeque themed wild west) and while three locations may not sound like many, the amount of stages in each is surprisingly high and each world has a couple of formula altering bonus stages, including a PS1 era Crash Bandicoot running-towards-the-screen affair. There’s a slight overlap too, with the second world sporting a spoof Takeshi’s Castle/Wipe Out obstacle course with wave-based challenges. Bosses, too, add variety. They’re all based around a similar foundation of avoiding waves of projectiles before volleying a bomb in their direction, and while they aren’t too taxing, they are at least enjoyable. Even though Garfield can only withstand three hits, the difficulty is pretty lax overall.
Challenge instead comes from finding lasagnas. Some stages are short, lasting under five minutes, and consequently only featuring 2-3 lasagnas to find, while a handful of stages approach ten minutes long and have 4-5 of the gooey meat dishes to locate. Most are well hidden, while others can be seen from afar, usually on top of a tower or similar. There are time-limit-activated lasagnas too, which must be reached before the clock runs out, along with lasagnas that split into three before spreading out. A pile of CRT screens signals the end of a stage, the path to which is usually well indicated. A couple of stages edge towards being open-world too, with one involving finding three switches – located in different directions – to access a pirate ship.
Later, the wild west’s minecart sections are repurposed for a fun rickety rollercoaster ride. Indeed, OSome has managed to get creative with asset recycling, making the most of what was likely only a modest budget. This extends to repurposing Jon’s house – seen in the opening and ending cut-scenes – as an extra feature with a catalogue of furniture to unlock, some of which can be reskinned. It is, ultimately though, a throwaway extra. I visited it a total of twice during my playthrough.
Back when I reviewed Marsupilami 2 – Salsa Palombia I noted that the license wasn’t of much importance; the developers seemingly wanted to make the best platformer they could using whatever license Microids handed over. Escape from Monday fares differently, in that it’s both a decent use of the license – cramming in numerous familiar faces and playing into Garfield’s need to feed – and a decent platformer with tight controls, level design that avoids becoming predictable by regularly introducing something new, and a moreish main objective. I’d gladly play a sequel. Through its use of costumes and a main villain intent on torment, I would even say it does a lot to renew interest in Garfield as a legit video game character going forward, being far more pleasurable to spend time with than ol’ Bubsy.
OSome Studio’s Garfield: Escape from Monday is out 23rd September on all formats. Published by Microids.