An Interesting Journey of Monsieur PAF

Review

Monsieur Paf is a super tough guy; he is tall, built like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was Mister Universe, and likes to wear a red beret. In his line of work (personal bodyguard), it’s important to fit the bill. Recently, he landed a fascinating job! All he has to do is to accompany an old archaeologist on a new site where an ancient temple has been discovered. “Easy peasy lemon squeasy; I can definitely hold this garden gnome’s hands,” he thought to himself. It has now been over a month since he started this job and he absolutely loves it! But today, after a long day of excavation, the garden gnome managed to displace a large rock from the temple entrance arch by leaning on it. The arch started to rumble, and Mr. Paf tried to hold it with all his strength while the archaeologist ran to safety. Now he is on the wrong side of the entrance and needs to find another way out of the temple. That’s how an interesting journey of Monsieur Paf starts!

An Interesting Journey of Monsieur PAF is an isometric puzzle platformer game developed by Ernestine and published by Plug in Digital on the 30th of July 2020 on Steam.

After launching the game and being introduced to the story with comic-style illustrations, you’ll be taking control of Mr. Paf, and you’ll find out whether he has a brain that equals his muscle mass (well, you’ll be his brain).

The first challenge is basically a tutorial, which is extremely well done and shows you Mr. Paf’s skills. Then you’ll arrive in a room with a massive rock in the middle of it. This room will feature 4 entrances, three of which are blocked. When you successfully manage to open the three entrances, the fun really starts!



Initially, you have to find four animal relics that are hidden in secret rooms somewhere within the temple, and then place them in the room where the massive block is located. As you enter new rooms, some of them will have gears of different colours (depending on which entrance you take) There are puzzles to complete in order to reach these gears. You will need a certain number of these coloured gears to open another path which will lead you to a secret room and therefore to each of the relics.

I really like the puzzles in this game.  At times they are quite complex and you really have to think and study each room; the items inside can be used to solve a puzzle or to access another room.  There are platforms to activate and objects to push or jump on in order to access an elevated level or reach a coloured gear.  You’ll also see turquoise pillars, on each side of which you’ll see a switch and a circle made of two arrows. These pillars will reset the room to its original condition, including the moveable objects. On occasion, you’ll need to use these pillars to your advantage in order to solve a puzzle. That’s right, you’ll need to think outside the box (you are Monsieur Paf’s brain, after all)!

Paf can punch really hard and break a few rocks and activate switches, but he will have difficulty overcoming these rare large red rocks that block his path in some of the rooms. The solution is to find some red totems with the fire icon on them and punch it to activate Paf’s fire punch. Then you’ll be able to break down the rocks. But bear in mind that once you activate the fire punch, you can only use it once. If you punch something else by accident (which I have done a few times), you’ll have to go back to the totem to reactivate it.

The game will automatically save each time you enter or re-enter a room, which is a very good feature.  However, if you are like me, someone who plays around and tries to reach a difficult area but forgets to clear the path properly before doing so, you’ll find yourself unable to go back because you re-entered a room before realising that you stuffed up in the previous room. In my case, when I wanted to reload the room in which I stuffed up, I reloaded the room that I re-entered after the one I stuffed up. (I must say that most of the time when I look in a mirror, I see a super cool, awesome man with a debonair French accent, but when I looked deeper on this particular day, all I could see was a donkey; I couldn’t believe what I’d done!)

Therefore, I have a request to the devs . . . . could you add a Main Save for when you successfully complete a puzzle, as well as the automatic save each time you enter a room? Because in my case, I had to restart the entire game, which was really annoying!

I love the colourful cartoon style of graphics and the variety of puzzles. You can play the game with your keyboard, but I strongly recommend using a gamepad for this one.

 

Review written by THE CPT FROGGY for Zeepond.com!


Positives

+ Fabulous graphics
+ Good variety of puzzles
+ Fun to play
+ Achievements

Negatives

- Doesn’t have a main save after successfully completing the core puzzle
- No trading cards as yet

Review Summary

Monsieur Paf: An extremely well-done isometric puzzle-platformer game.  It’s delightful, and makes you think outside the box!

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Zeepond Rating: 8/10

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