The Nerdy Type

I spend a lot of time mindlessly scrolling through Itch.io, looking for new and eye-catching games to play in-browser. It’s become my version of doom-scrolling, and it’s pretty much a guaranteed way to introduce myself to something new to play. This is how I found Mondays. 

To give it its full name, Mondays: A Sisyphean Typing Game by Alex and Max Robins has become my latest obsession, and I openly admit that I mean that in possibly an unhealthy way. It’s all about typing, but it’s also one of the most frustrating games I’ve ever played, while also managing to be the most addictive, so I’m kind of hooked without hope of unhooking myself. 

Keep rollin’, rollin’, rollin’, rollin’

If you don’t know the story of Sisyphus, then you should probably get on that. Long story short, he was a very naughty boy in Greek mythology, and his punishment in the afterlife was to endlessly push a boulder up a steep hill for all eternity. And in this never-ending story of pointless struggles and uphill battles lies the premise of Mondays. 

In Mondays, you are a typist at a company who must endlessly send out mundane and pointless company-wide emails. You have to type accurately, because one typo is enough to send you crashing down to the bottom of the very steep hill, starting at the beginning of the particular email that you’ve already messed up once (or a few times, depending on how accurate you can be). 

These emails range in subject from boasting about the new office holepunch to chastizing people for using the table tennis equipment outside of the sanctioned break times. They’re completely unneccessary emails, we all know the type, and it’s your job to type them up to perfection lest you find yourself starting all over again. 

Money talks, but anime eyes talk louder

For every email you manage to send out in Mondays, you get some money credited to you. This money can then be spent in the shop that pops up every time you either successfully send or fail at typing up an email and crash back down into the pantheon at the bottom of the hill. The store shows up as a bunch of pop-ups, and it’s mostly cosmetics like hats, eyes, and skins for the boulder. 

However, some of these purchases are a double-edged sword. Putting some anime eyes and a propeller hat on your boulder is all fun and games, but unlocking ‘long emails’ is equal parts a delight and a problem. Sure, longer emails will earn you more money, but more characters to type means more possibility for mistakes, and more mistakes mean more moments of rage as you roll backwards down the hill. 

But those cosmetics are oh so tempting, and you need the money to buy them, lest you be stuck with a boring grey ball in place of one wearing a cowboy hat and sporting a lovely pipe. Just be warned that some of the accessories cause the ball to make obnoxiously loud noises every time you press a key, which is impossibly distracting.

Typing is hard

Look, I am what most people would consider to be an ‘above average typer’. My optimal speed is around 80-85 WPM (words per minute), and I usually have around a 98% accuracy rate. How do I know that? Because I test myself a little too regularly. 

For some infuriating and baffling reason, Mondays seems to make my fingers incapable of functioning at that standard rate that I’m used to. Maybe it’s because I’m having to type out words that I haven’t seen coming or thought of myself, so I can’t plan out where my fingers need to go next. Maybe it’s the pressure of the potential failure that is a typo, or maybe it’s purely psychological. 

Whatever the reason, while I’m usually a pretty good typist, playing Mondays makes me want to emulate Sisyphus, take my laptop to the top of a mountain, and throw it off in a fit of rage. But, on the other hand, I also keep returning every day to see if I’ve improved from the previous day. It’s like an itch I have to scratch, and it’s as fun as it is concerning.

Despite all of the frustration that builds up in me whenever I play Mondays, I think it’s an utterly brilliant concept, and Alex and Max are a pair of evil geniuses for turning this into a game that has me so completely hooked. You can play too, if you want to torture yourself (or you simply enjoy challenging typing games), on Itch.io.