Anyone who has gone to an arcade probably remembers playing an arcade shooter of some kind. Galaga, 1943 : The Battle of Midway, Space Harrier, etc. The waves of enemies that were sent to stop your character from getting to the end, the endless amounts of bullets being fired at you simultaneously, the concentration that you would need to be able to make a decent amount of progress through these games. All these feelings are very familiar and nostalgic for some players. Monolith is a new 3D arcade shooter that should bring back some good memories of these times.
It follows a similar formula as other games of this genre. You are flying to a goal and have to shoot your way through an endless amount of enemies that are shooting even more projectiles to take your ship down. The shooting mechanics for your ship are a bit different. In the old games, once you hit the fire button, you fire a shot and you could shoot as much as you wanted as fast as you could hit the button. In Monolith, you can only shoot after locking on the enemy, basically putting your cross hairs on the enemy for a set amount of time until you hear a nice blip noise telling you that you’re locked on. After that, you can move as much as you want and take the shot at your leisure. The good thing about locking on to the opponent is the shot is guaranteed to hit, but that little wait you have to make to be able to take that shot initially adds a lot of depth to the game as your enemies don’t have to do anything of the such and can shoot at you as much as they need to.
The visuals are very unique as everything is colored with different shades of black and white. The shots will still stand out very clearly as will the enemies and your own ship. In the background is a massive monolith that stretches far into the sky, which is supposedly your goal. The music really gets the blood pumping and every enemy has a unique firing pattern that you will need to recognize immediately if you want to survive long enough to make it to the monolith.
Download the prototype jam game on itch.io.
Played it? We’d love to know what you thought about it.
