Today, rather than a fantasy book, I’m going to be reviewing a fantasy multiplayer dating simulator visual novel! Monster Prom is a game about finding a date (who’s a monster) (you’re a monster too) to take to prom. It can be played solo or with up to four players and it’s available for both Mac and PC. It’s also pretty nuts.
You pick one of four characters (don’t worry, a purely superficial choice) to play as. You then have several weeks to get one of six characters to fall for you. These love interests are: a pugnacious demon, an upper-class mermaid, a party-loving ghost, a hipster vampire, a jock werewolf, and an avaricious gorgon. (Your choices are of course absolutely not limited by the gender of your character; although they’re in high school, everyone’s also all over 18… somehow, so things don’t get weird.) Gameplay consists primarily of two parts: 1) building stats such as “Charm” or “Boldness” by going to (or skipping) class, and 2) making the correct choices that play to your strengths while you get into wacky hijinks with your love interest. These wacky hijinks involve everything from helping the ghost pull some great pranks/get wasted, to helping the vampire take the perfect Instagram pic of his food, to helping the gorgon figure out the best response to a random dude sending her a dick pic.
What’s great is that said wacky hijinks are completely randomised and there are dozens of events. Say you wanna get with the demon: one playthrough may involve getting matching sea cucumber tattoos together while another will be involve helping him punch the sun. Monster Prom is thus highly replayable, with each playthrough lasting about an hour. Adding friends also adds another layer of fun. You take turns and after every event you switch who gets to go first; this is done by answering silly questions that the game throws at you, then arguing over who has the better answer. Plus you can compete for the same love interest, and either help each other or try to sabotage the other’s love life.
As you’ve probably guessed, the game absolutely doesn’t take itself seriously. Monster Prom is extremely high energy, and pokes fun at everything: from fandom, to hipsters, to fantasy tropes, to Monster Prom itself. One of the best characters is actually the narrator, who’s constantly bitching about how ridiculous everything is. The game probably works best if you play with people who are at least vaguely nerdy/in fandom but there’s plenty of jokes for non-“hardcore Online people” too. Of course, humour is highly subjective, so if you’re not sure about hijinks and high-energy craziness, scroll through a couple playthrough videos online first. I will say that I’ve played with four different friends with different senses of humour and level of fandom-ness, and so far everyone’s had a great time. Sometimes the game even gets really sweet, with the boisterous/too-cool-for-school characters showing off a softer side. …But not often.
Monster Prom is primarily a couch multiplayer. However, so far I’ve been playing multiplayer by sharing my screen over Skype and my friends telling me which option they’d like to pick, which works just as great. Although the solo mode is fun enough, I do think the game shines best when played with others. There’s just something extra special about laughing at your friend as they yell about failing to seduce the mermaid, and them laughing back at you when you end up making your werewolf crush king of the furries. Playing visual novels with friends is something I really enjoy in general. However, as I almost always play the game through first myself, it’s usually my friend actually playing while I put on dumbass voices reading for the other characters. Here, you get to switch between who’s playing and who’s doing the dumbass voices, which makes the game an instant fave for me.
Altogether, I highly recommend Monster Prom. The art is great, the dialogue is snappy, and the events are the kind of bonkers where you want to be able to turn to a friend and go, “…Did that actually just happen, what the fuck”. It’s definitely not for everyone, but if you think your friend group might be into it, give it a spin next time you have a house party. And there’s a sequel, which adds even more events and two new love interests. Monster Prom is available on Steam and GOG, for Mac and PC.
