My Singing Monsters Review

I’ll confess that I’ve been getting a bit burned-out on freemium town building games, but I do love me some wacky music games. Since My Singing Monsters is both, it’s captured my interest if not my excitement. After spending a couple of days grooming my cuddly nightmare choir I’ve come to a realization: it would be a pretty cool game if I could actually play it with any consistency.

Much like the zoo-themed free-to-plays of always, My Singing Monsters lets players purchase critters for their collection, expand the grounds by removing detritus, acquire food, give food to their denizens in order to increase their levels and potential earnings, gather coins from their wards every so often, then use the cash to purchase more stuff/living things. Oh, and monsters can be bred in order to produce new hybrids. Where it all differs is with the monsters themselves. Each breed is musically inclined and they call, tap, sing, drum, doo-wop, pound, and fiddle their own sounds constantly. More of a given monster emphasizes their “instrument” of choice, while more of a variety creates additional layers for the environment’s (there are three overall) tune.

My Singing Monsters immediately gets a very important aspect for any music game right: the music. Hearing what begins as a simple beat evolve into a full cacophony of surreal sounds that’s as infectious and pleasing as it is downright weird is simply fantastic. This is made all the more captivating by the bizarre creatures that inhabit the world and create these tunes. A multi-toed bug-eyed jellyfish and a bipedal dragon-thing that drums on its own potbelly are only the tip of the iceberg.

Everything is great until that magical moment when the game refuses to acknowledge log in information. When it’s running smoothly I enjoy it quite a bit. When it kicks me back to the loading screen, then refuses to log me back in, I don’t enjoy it quite so much. Or at all. At first I thought it might be a connection problem on my end but a quick check of the App Store reviews has me thinking that it’s some kind of server problem. This is a real shame because the game itself is surprisingly cool but not being able to log in - or even worse, log in and think everything is fine only to be forcefully logged out a minute later - is infuriating.

I still think My Singing Monsters is a great little curiosity for any musical enthusiast’s iOS device but it will require some patience until the connection issues get ironed out. Still, it’s pretty darned cool when it works.