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4cr Plays - Mon Amour (Switch)

In every medium - movies, books, even games - there are those mad geniuses whose names elicit an immediate reaction. Their works aren’t always good, but they are always damn interesting. You’ve probably heard some of these names - Suda51, Swery65, Hideo Kojima.

Yoshiro Kimura doesn’t quite have the same level of fame. Many of his games, with studio Onion Games, have only made it westward in the past few years. None of his games - Moon, Black Bird, Dandy Dungeon - are world-shatteringly great. However, they are always incredibly interesting.

His newest game, Mon Amour, has just launched on Nintendo Switch and Steam. What is it? It’s kind of like Flappy Bird, but with a lot more kissing. It’s a game that I hated at first, but then couldn’t stop. It’s weird as hell, but has a lot of heart. In other words, it’s certainly a Yoshiro Kimura game.

Mon Amour is a fairly minimal game. The mechanics are immediately intuitive, and there are no hour-long cutscenes. There is still a basic story presented as a framing device for what you see on the screen, and it is worth passing along as it does set the mood for what you are about to experience. Three love-starved witches have kidnapped your princess and taken her off to the land of Babastille. Along with her, they have kidnapped all 64 members of her court. It’s up to you to rescue them… with the power of your lips. That’s right. Rather than stomping on a hyperactive turtle, you rescue each lovely lady by kissing them.

Mon Amour is a collection of single-screen stages, where you attempt to fly from the left and plant your lips on the lady waiting to the right. You move to the right by pumping a button to stay airborne, but you must avoid the buildings both above and below you. Hitting either is instant death, unless you have protection.

The current target of your affections is constantly rotating her head the entire time, and when you run into her, she spits out a trail of hearts in the direction she was facing. When you enter the next level, those hearts remain in place, and you can increase your score by collecting some of them while flying towards your new target. The hearts merge together when they touch into a larger heart. The larger the heart - the more points you receive.

There are also explosive fruits that you can run into to remove some of the obstacles from your path, and fruits that give you a single-use shield. In the case of both fruit and hearts, you can either pick them up immediately, or leave them for a little later on. The game is sectioned into stages, and fruit and hearts persist over the different screens in a stage. It is often worth leaving the fruit for a bit to take care of the harder traps that come later in the stage. Likewise, leaving hearts on the screen and trying to shoot more hearts in their direction is worthwhile to get a bigger score bonus.

The women you collect form a sort of health bar. If you take a hit, you lose one of the women. To truly complete the game, you need to collect 64, so you don’t want to lose any of them. However, you still get a score based on how many you have collected before dying or getting to the end of the 50th level.

From this point, there aren’t any major surprises. The levels grow harder - with narrower windows to float through and obstacles to avoid - and the scenery changes, but this is mainly a single-button game about floating into the faces of kidnapped women. It’s weird, but certainly not the weirdest premise in gaming.

This all sounds simple, and it mostly is, but it takes a lot of work to master. The page for the game on the Switch eShop warns that “there is a 99% change you’ll instantly die as soon as you press start”. They aren’t wrong. There is absolutely no introduction, and you will immediately sink to the bottom of the screen and die unless you are fast on the draw. It took me several tries to get the timing down to even get to the first target.

To be honest, I actively disliked the game for the first 20 minutes or so that I played it. It felt awful to just spam the button to stay afloat, and I just didn’t get it. I don’t know what changed, but I started to get a little further and a little further, and then it sort of clicked. I started to have a lot more fun as I internalized the rhythm of the controls.

The mechanics are simple, but being good at this game takes a lot of work. Learning how to direct your momentum, when to pick up hearts and fruits, and how to direct the spurt of new hearts (that’s certainly a phrase) all requires practice. Mon Amour certainly has that addictive quality where you find yourself clicking start for one more round, even when you meant to move on to some other activity.

Mon Amour looks really cool. The pixel art is incredibly charming, and the little characters have a surprising amount of personality. The stages are colorful and varied, and there is this weird dream-like vibe to the whole experience - with blur, swirls, and a psychedelic color palate. The soundtrack also certainly contributes to that vibe. The game blends scat-singing and improvisational jazz as you float across screen after screen. None of these components make all that much sense in isolation, but they do gel in this weirdly-compelling way.

In the end, I’m not completely sure how I feel about Mon Amour. Do I love it? I can’t give an unqualified “yes.” It’s frustrating and not always fun. I mentioned above that I hated it until it clicked. Even after that point, I’ve gone back and forth a little with my opinion on the game. Still, it can be addictive, and there are sessions where I have had a lot of fun. I also love the silliness of the premise, look, and soundtrack. The game is charming as hell.

In other words, it is a Yoshiro Kimura game. Flawed, but also something wholly unique, charming, and just interestingly weird. Mon Amour lacks the brilliance of Moon (seriously, check it out). Still, in the end, I recommend checking it out if the gameplay sound fun, or if you’re looking for a unique way to waste a little time.

A copy of the game was provided for this review.

Official Website

Nintendo eShop