Reviews from

in the past


uma fofura que fala sobre a magia da infância, é um jogo bem curtinho mas com uma paixão enorme posta nele. recheado de nostalgia e criatividade se tornando bem difícil não se sentir acolhido por toda a atmosfera do jogo que, mesmo se passando em uma realidade completamente diferente da que eu tive, consegue ser tão encantadora.

Me sinto um pouco egoísta ao falar que queria que videogames fossem mais como esse. Sei que jogos são cada vez mais caros e difíceis de preparar e que por causa disso a indústria prioriza jogos com bastante longevidade, mas no meio deles, uma obra pequena e claramente pessoal como Friday Monsters bate de um jeito diferente. É uma obra claramente nostálgica, uma espiadinha na mente do autor cheia de tudo que faz especial ser um moleque pirralho burro catarrento imaginando monstros e lutinhas na sua cabeça. Muito fofo!!

this game is more "cinema" than anything most game designers could EVER dream of

Like playing a slice of life, coming of age anime with a little bit of Sentai / Kaiju genre pastiche thrown in as nostalgic underpinning, fitting of the time and place (1970's rural Japan). No doubt a personal connection shared by many of the creators, the love put into the game is easily felt; it's charming, short and sweet, and makes you feel like a kid again for a precious few hours.


Surprisingly mysterious in its plotting, while at the same time warmly familiar in its specific evocation of childhood summertime. I hate the summer but somehow that didn't matter here. The sound of summer bugs stays happily humming in my ears. One of many cases for the superiority of fixed camera angles.

Was heavily inspired by the Into the Aether podcast to pick this one up. Never played any of these Boku no Natsuyasumi "nostalgic adventure" games before, but this does definitely capture the vibe of an idyllic suburban town on the verge of modernization and such. Very pleasant running around and listening to the trains and cicadas.

The only other experience I have with this subgenre is FLCL, which while having a more coming-of-age focus, does still have monsters and aliens and absurd abstract ideas presented through a kids' point of view.

Personally, I enjoyed it as a succinct package but didn't really find the story or characters that engaging, which turned the game to more of a "run to this point on the map to progress the story" rather than an organic evolving story. Collecting the Glim was fine, and the card game is neat and cute in how it ties to the plot.

On the one hand, I wish that they didn't include map markers so you had to really explore more to find the person you were looking for, but on the other, map traversal started to become a bit of a slog in the second half of the game, especially in the southern bridge area.

Overall, a neat package, but don't think this genre's necessarily for me. Still enjoyed checking it out though. Being able to have different conversation topics with everyone and hear their mundane thoughts at the end is a gem.

Jogo muito gostosinho, uma pena ser tão curtinho, terminei com menos de 3h de gameplay. História biruta sobre crianças fascinadas por kaijus. Muito engraçado.

I must be bugging because the world loves this game. The pre-rendered backdrops are nice and it isn't overly long but dang does the translation suck. There's a lot of writing here but none of it is very funny and most characters speak in the same voice. I'd recommend A Short Hike, Mutazione, or Wide Ocean Big Jacket if you want better summery story-focused games.

I didn’t know this game was kind of part of a series when I played it years ago. I thought it was cute and quirky. Since then I’ve watched Tim Rogers’ review of Boku no natsuyasumi and I think I can safely say this game is no Boku no natsuyasumi.

Goofy little slice of life game. I hope it’s not the closest we’ll get to a western release of Boku no Natsuyasumi.

Loved it as a kid and love it even more today. All the little intricacies of the characters' relationships with each other and the town went completely over my head when I was young! Short, sweet, and incredibly charming—if you skip the postgame, which I did, and I thank myself every day for it.
If this is a bite-sized Boku no Natsuyasumi, then I'm super excited to check out the series proper.

Starting off with the positives, I really enjoyed the world even though the only thing you can interact with are people. The people themselves are very charming and fun to talk to. The card collecting is very enjoyable and the fact that you do most of it by exporting the whole town is a joy. The story although very bizarre kept me guessing a little bit and encapsulated how weird kids can be. Now for the bad, this game kind of punishes you for wanting to see it all. Backtracking is very tedious and some areas have no reason to take as long as they do to walk through. Later on when you need to play the card game more and more it really starts to wear down on you, it’s mostly chance until you get the better cards. Finally if you want to 100% complete the game please just turn it off and go do something better with your life. I’ve never had a game say they hope I have fun with the epilogue before, and I can see why. Other than some unique dialogue you can squeeze out after lots of effort of running back and forth and talking to people in very arbitrary orders, you also have to play the card game and win every time in order to hear it from the kids. Every single time. And don’t get me started on getting that final card, it’s almost as if the game didn’t want me to beat it. Making the main episode finish by collecting all the cards is a cruel sick joke, especially since the way to get the pieces to complete the more rare cards is the worst rng I have ever seen along with very unfair card game AI. It took about 4 hours to beat the main game and honestly 4 more hours of endless grinding of the EXACT SAME card fight over and over and over and over just to finally get enough. I will never get that time back, and it doesn’t even give you any reward for 100%.

El primer elemento que llama la atención en Attack of the Friday Monsters es el intenso paraje sonoro que lo impregna. Pasear por la pequeña aldea de Fuji no Hana es como sumergirte en una piscina de sonidos que capturan un momento ficticio, pero muy vívido, del suburbio japonés. A partir de ahí, el diálogo y las animaciones colaboran constantemente para insistirte en que ésta es una infancia compartida por toda una generación.

Cualquiera que haya jugado a algo de Kaz Ayabe y Millennium Kitchen sabe que éstos siempre han sido los puntos fuertes de su carrera artística, que aquí se utilizan para transmitir un mensaje muy sencillo pero poderoso: que la ficción nos forma en igual medida que nosotres moldeamos la ficción. En más de una ocasión el juego recurre a lugares comunes que este tipo de género viene repitiendo desde los tiempos de Totoro, si no antes. Lo que le hace destacar es su tremendo respeto al horizonte emocional de la juventud sin por ello esconder que se trata de un horizonte ficticio, sostenido por una mezcla de ignorancia deliberada y complicidad de les adultes.

En este respecto, es preciso que señale el increíble trabajo hecho por el equipo de localización a la hora de adaptar las idiosincrasias de Millennium Kitchen al inglés, porque no tuvo que ser fácil. Si hay una única cosa que impide a este juego ser un triunfo artístico indiscutible es el hecho de que el juego de cartas (que personalmente me encanta y adoro cómo se integra con las dinámicas de los chavales) ofusca la parte final de la obra, cuando se te permite al fin deambular por la ciudad a tu gusto.

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The first thing that catches your eye (or rather, your ear) in Attack of the Friday Monsters is its soundscape. Strolling through the small village of Fuji no Hana is like diving into the pool of a very real, albeit fictitious, slice of Japanese suburbia. From that point on, dialogue and animations alike are in constant cahoots to convince that this is a real fragment of many people's childhoods.

Anyone who has played anything by Kaz Ayabe and Millennium Kitchen knows that these elements have always been their forte, and here they are used to convey a very simple but powerful message: that fiction shapes us as much as we shape fiction. On more than one occasion the game resorts to genre tropes that have been repeated since My Neighbor Totoro, if not before. What makes it stand out is its tremendous respect towards the emotional horizon of youth without hiding the fact of how fragile it is, sustained by a mixture of wilful ignorance and adult complicity.

In this regard, I must give kudos to the incredible localization of this game. It must've been hard to adapt Millennium Kitchen's stuff into English. If there is one thing that prevents this game from becoming an artistic triumph is the fact that the card game (which I personally love and adore how it integrates with the kids' dynamics) obfuscates the final part of the game, when you are finally allowed to wander around the city as you please.

Não há nada mais aterrorizante do que deparar-se com algo nostálgico e fantasioso, que não apenas remete a um momento que nunca mais voltará, mas também a uma lente através da qual você via o mundo e nunca reencontrou. Attack of the Friday Monsters é tenebrosamente fofo - e eu não sei jogar 3DS.

Uma fofura. Se agarra à inocência e inventividade infantil e conta uma história que tenho certeza que toda criança espevitada já viveu em sua cabeça, explicitando tudo de estúpido e belo que torna a infância uma coisa tão linda. A estética de Tokyo rural e sua paixão pelo tokusatsu amarra tudo com um lacinho de nostalgia por parte dos criadores que completa a obra como um pacote simplesmente :)

Além disso, esse jogo ter tipo 10 modelos, 5 animações, 10 ilustrações e 15 minutos de música é o tipo de encorajamento logístico que me convence que posso sim fazer muito com pouca quantidade - me falta só a qualidade.

childhood: 🥱
childhood, japan: 🤩

4 STARS: EVERYONE SHOULD PLAY THIS
[review tbd]

It's a really unique game, I loved the feeling of roaming around this little town, but the story simply was a little too weird for my liking. Also a very simple gameplay loop, that is charming but also a bit lackluster, and the game ends before you know it. Still, it's a really fun adventure that you should check out, just not a perfect one.

Such a chill game. I would love to give it 4 stars, but the ending just kind of tipped over. The setup and mystery of this game are so cool. The idea of a television station potentially cosmically and unintentionally creating monsters for peoples need to be entertained is very cool.

Why do people need to see fighting on screen? Is it worth threatening a small town for that entertainment? There are some neat ideas in here, paired with some immaculate vibes, that just don't go anywhere at the end. Still a good time, but could have been great.

The game is structured through non-linear episodes and follows ten year old boy, Sohta, who recently moved into a new town with his mom and dad (circa 1971). Every Friday monsters appear in town, and it just so happens that TODAY is Friday.. it’s a cute little experience and gives “coming of age” vibes. The plot is very lighthearted.

The gameplay is simple, featuring a card-based rock paper scissors minigame of sorts as well as “glim” collecting that funnels into the minigame. You spend the entirety of the game navigating the town, talking to townsfolk and classmates, and challenging peers to “Monster Cards”.

As far as its presentation, others have described it as “Ghibli-esque”, and I think that’s an apt comparison. It’s extremely charming. The pre-rendered backdrops are pretty. The writing and localization feels a bit off, and the voice acting just kind of “exists”…

It’s extremely short (took me ~3 hours to complete), but for the price, it was a pleasant little game to split up and knock out over a couple of sessions. It didn’t necessarily resonate with me like I was hoping, but for what it’s worth, it gave me a little insight into the Japanese culture and the era represented that I was otherwise unfamiliar with.

RIP 3DS ESHOP 🪦

My first game from Kaz Ayabe

I find myself in a bit of a dilemma. While the game, on the whole, didn't quite resonate with me, it does harbor fragments of what I cherish in an adventure game. It weaves a tale steeped in magical realism; a family relocates to a town where, seemingly, daikaiju appear and fight every Friday

However, as one swiftly discerns by exploring the place and conversing with some of the adults, it's all a fictitious: the town has been chosen as a TV/Movie set for tokusatsu shows. Yet, this revelation is never explicitly stated; the lens is that of the protagonist, a kid who earnestly believes in the existence of these colossal creatures. The game unfolds as the child spends a couple of days with his newfound friends, endeavoring to unravel the mystery of the kaijus.

Well, in any case something quite mysterious eventually happens.

Basically, the game is an adventure encapsulated within the tight confines of the town: only a handful of houses line the streets we traverse, and the entire space can be explored in a mere 5 minutes. It's an adventure on a minuscule scale, with fixed-camera angles and exquisitely hand-drawn backgrounds. Talking about the fixed-camera angles, I found their use to be quite interesting.

3D models are sparingly used: characters (excluding a cameraman) and a train that traverses tracks leading to and from the town. This, to me, is one of the most captivating aspects of games: the presence of elements and systems that unfold in real-time, shifting from one place to another while the player is engrossed in another pursuit. Numerous times, I found myself anticipating the arrival of a train, reaching an underpass where I could hear the clatter of the tracks, and finally ascending to a vantage point from which I could observe the same train fading from the screen. These nuances, in my case, provide an almost grounded experience, allowing me to immerse myself in the fictitious setting on-screen. Regrettably, the rest of the game tends to be rather static, offering only fleeting impressions despite being developed by LEVEL-5. However, one should not expect too much, as it's part of the smaller projects from the Guild01 and Guild02 series, collaborations with other developers, published on the eShop.

The magical realism that permeates the game is particularly intriguing during those brief moments when it endeavors to reconstruct an era of Japanese suburbs. A period marked by technological innovation, economic prosperity, and rural realities converging - a blend of factors that provides fertile ground for the surreal aspects of this narrative. The fumes of industrialization, visible in the distant background (not integral to the story but contextualizing its historical backdrop), almost seem like a remote reality. In this context, tokusatsu serves as more than a symbol of the protagonist's growth; it mirrors the maturation of the entire Japanese town.

On several occasions we talk to the adults inhabiting this small town on the outskirts of Tokyo. These instances are practically the only times when you find yourself in rather confined, almost humble spaces, and in close proximity. Let's say that it's in these moments that you truly have the opportunity to appreciate both your own and others' facial expressions. On the contrary, the rest of the game (mostly spent conversing with friends and peers) unfolds in much larger spaces; at times, the perspective is from above, and the view extends towards the horizon. It almost creates a distinction between the adult world and that of the youth

A prominent aspect the game irks me: the necessity to traverse back and forth to engage in conversations with all the characters, gradually peeling back the layers of their mundane stories. I think the game gets kind of erratic in an annoying way. While this is formalized through a structure of progressing sub-quests, I didn't like it since it's all so brief, free and oversimplistic (I don't want to say superficial) at the same time. What's more vexing is having to do so in situations that, from the protagonist's perspective, should be particularly intense and urgent. Granted, this is a common occurrence in many games, where one can stop from doing something urgent to partake in secondary activities. However, in this case, I think an even more linear experience would have undoubtedly enhanced the overall immersion.

On the opposite, I didn't mind the card game. I don't really care about it and its rules though, since it mainly serves the story and the context - serving as a reflection of the television success of tokusatsu shows in the '60s and '70s. It mirrors perfectly the carefree nature of the children on-screen and the very magical realism that defines the story. The children's imagination materializes in their ability to merge cards and discover them in fragments.

While writing this comment of mine, I drew substantial inspiration from Cadensia's captivating review, which I wholeheartedly recommend you to read.

Final thought: the whole cast of characters is well made, each one of them has a distinguished personality that makes them kind of memorable.

I guess that my main grip with the game is that it almost feels like a very fast prologue that will never see an extension of its scopes.

this game was so mind boggling and made me laugh out loud so many times .. the way level 5 constructs games are so fun and refreshing

Love this tight little diorama-esque world where everyone's individual stories and woes allow them to so easily ingratiate themselves to the player, only to one-by-one knock down the character development dominoes as the plot comes to a head with the proclamation that "your dad can actually be pretty cool sometimes."


I enjoyed this one a lot, even if the card game boils down to just a pile up of cards with big numbers.

A Showa coming-of-age adventure on a similar wavelength as BokuNatsu, its magical-realist storytelling ambitions keep grinding to a halt to make space for a pointless and annoying card-game feature. Otherwise pretty neat, though. Lovely prerendered environments.

Very cute adventure game with a nice and surprisingly deep story! The gameplay is rather simple as it's more of a walking simulator, but the plot keeps you going. It definitely left me with wanting more out of it though, but it's nice for what it is.

Man, I BADLY NEED English patches for the Boku no Natsuyasumi games.