Garfield: Escape from Monday review

Let’s face it: Garfield can be difficult to tolerate for extended periods. Sure, his lethargy and contempt for nearly everything might work well for a three-panel comic. But that grumpiness might become exhausting when stretched across an entire game. Smartly, Garfield: Escape from Monday gives Jim Davis’ cranky cat something more productive to do than complain. Yes, he still grumbles about exercise and vegetables but his sarcasm is offset by a surprisingly springy moveset. Curiously, Garfield dreams of moving with the fluidity of Mario.

The storyline is build around Jon serving Garfield a spinach lasagna based on a recipe from television chef Monday. After trying it, Garfield falls into a deep sleep and awakens in a food-obsessed dreamscape. To escape, the orange cat has to gather lasagna, fend off hostile produce, while familiar characters like Jon, Odie, Arlene, and Pookie all reminds you that this is a licensed game. While the premise doens’t so much but reiterate on Garfield’s aversion to healthy eating, it justifies gigantic veggies and confectionery landscapes.

From Smurf Blue to Tabby Orange

Developer OSome Studio has demonstrated its ability to make competent platforming with The Smurfs: Mission Vileaf and The Smurfs 2: The Prisoner of the Green Stone. Yes, those games weren’t revolutionary, but they built accessible 3D adventures around licensed characters. Largely, that’s evident here as well. Garfield’s jump is responsive while his midair movement is easy to adjust. A forward dive can transition into a roll that keeps your momentum, so navigation feels solid. He can also kick enemies, ninja climb between walls, and slam down onto switches or destructible objects.

Once the controls click, there’s basic pleasure found in tackling a stage. As such everything from jumping combos, dives, and enemy bounces can be accomplished fairly easily. And given the popualrity of precision platforming, Escape from Monday’s leninacy is welcome. A time-attack option unlocks after completing a level, giving players a reason to learn faster routes. For better or worse, the generous target times and absence of competitive leaderboards keep it from becoming a strenous test. Yes, it’s rather cliché, but any loss of health felt like my fault, not the controls.

Watch Out, Ya Turkey

Escape from Monday’s campaign is spread across three culinary worlds. Veggie Nightmare transforms farms and factories into hostile agricultural areas with plenty of dangers. The Sweet Kingdom surrounds Garfield with all kinds of candy, chocolate rivers and sky-donuts. Finally, Barbecue Desert combines Western imagery with hot dogs and fries that jut from the ground. Beyond each region having its own color palette and obstacle types each has it’s own surreal blend of labyrinthine walkways and different foods. Sadly, Garfield’s subconscious is pretty predictable.

Each world also supplies Garfield with a specialized form. The turkey outfit grants three additional midair jumps, letting him flap across long gaps. His surfer form can ride over dangerous liquids, grind rails, and bounce across geysers. The cowboy costume provides a lasso for grappling between points and occasionally hitching a ride on enemies. They all look absurd, which is cool. But there’s just not enough of these gimmicks to rival Super Mario Bros. Wonder’s sense of discovery.

“Nice Touch!”

But that said, these transformations are one of the best things about Monday. Surfing across chocolate or swinging through a succession of grapple points adds some much-needed variety to an otherwise straightforward collect-a-thon. However, the abilities only work is prescribed ways. The lasso can’t be used creatively in combat, while the surfboard appears only in signposted routes. As such, each mechanic is introduced before being repeatedly tested with little room for experimentation.

And this pattern becomes an issue when it comes to level design. Individual challenges are competent, checkpoints are generous, and the route forward is habitually clear. But stages often continue after they’ve worn out their main idea. While some might think of this as reinforcement, it can really feel like padding. The game has more than 40 levels, but if the developers broke them up, Monday could have felt more lively. Often, I found my interest wavering in most stages just after the halfway mark. The inclusion of some 2D sections is a plus, though.

Collecting More Than Calories

Hidden lasagnas and scattered food provide some incentive to wander slightly off the main path. Collecting them unlocks furniture and decorations for Jon’s dream house, with variants unlocked for clearing stages thoroughly. While completionists might appreciate it, arrange a room didn’t feel like proper compensation for combing each corner of a level. Some optional dream stages and boss battles are offered but these squander the change to push Garfield and his abilities in surprising directions.

On PC, Escape from Monday performs fluidly, which helps maintain the smoothness of its momentum-based movement. I was able to get a locked 60FPS output on Steam Deck without any changes, so I’m sure more powerful GPUs won’t have to put out much effort. Here, the game’s animation does much of the visual work, with Garfield’s hurried scrambling selling the joke of a lazy cat challenging a busy obstacle course.

Conclusion

Garfield: Escape from Monday isn’t going to trouble any of the genre’s hits, but it is an argeeable platformer elevated by responsive mechanics. OSome Studio’s experience means the fundamentals are accounted for, while Garfield’s form changes inject a bit of variety. While repetition and overly long stages can dampen things, the game would be great for younger players. Arguably, the game greatest feat is turning Garfield from a complainer into a competent show-cat.

Garfield: Escape from Monday was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.