Always Sometimes Monsters asks players to move through a city built from memory, shame and small kindnesses. It is a game about a man who loses his job and his girlfriend, and spends the next few years wandering, working odd jobs, sleeping on friends’ couches and trying to find his way back to both. The game is built around a simple system: players make choices, those choices change the shape of the story, and the game remembers everything.
Trailer, via DevolverDigital.
Choices That Carry Weight
Each decision made in Always Sometimes Monsters has a cost. Saying yes to a stranger’s request might mean losing a friend later. Choosing a path through the city can close off entire streets of options. The game tracks these choices across playthroughs, so returning to a scene later shows a different version of events depending on what came before.
That tracking gives the game a sense of history. Players see how their past actions changed the present, and the game leans into that loop with quiet force.
Writing That Stays With You
The dialogue in Always Sometimes Monsters is sharp and often funny, but it rarely settles for easy comedy. Characters talk about work, about family, about failure in ways that feel honest. The main character is not heroic, and the world around him is not clean. That honesty carries the weight of the story.
The game also handles silence well. Moments where nothing is said still land because the game trusts the player to sit with a pause.
City of Many Faces
Always Sometimes Monsters moves through a city that changes based on the choices made. Some areas open up, others close down. The game uses this design to keep the world feeling lived-in, full of dead ends and hidden paths.
Performance Across Platforms
| Platform | Release Date |
|---|---|
| PS4 | 2014 |
| Linux | 2014 |
| Android | 2014 |
| PC | 2014 |
The game runs on four platforms, and the experience holds together across all of them. There are some rough edges in the presentation, especially in how the city renders during busy moments, but the core systems work well everywhere.
- Choices carry visible consequences across playthroughs
- Dialogue stays honest and often funny
- The city changes shape based on player decisions
- Performance holds steady across PS4, Linux, Android and PC
Where It Falls Short
Not every choice feels equally meaningful. Some branches of the story are thin, and the game does not always explain why a particular option matters. The pacing can also slow in the middle, where stretches of wandering between scenes grow repetitive.
These are minor complaints set against a strong whole.
Always Sometimes Monsters earns its reputation as one of the more thoughtful games of its year. Its willingness to let the player fail, to let relationships end badly, and to show the cost of those failures without turning them into spectacle is rare. The game trusts the player to feel the loss, and that trust pays off.
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