Monster Prom is a new dating sim/visual novel developed by Beautiful Glitch and published by Those Awesome Guys. There’s just one little twist – you’re a monster, duh. Since your classmates consist of sexy ghosts, hipster vampires and a werewolf jock, things can get pretty interesting. Just when you think things can’t get any weirder, they just do.
When you first boot up the game you have the choice of four different characters to play as. Physical attributes stay the same, but you do have the ability to change the name of your monster and the pronoun that you chose to go by. The next and final step before starting your final weeks leading up to prom (3 and 6 depending on which play-through you choose) is stat allocation. Unlike most games that give you a pool of stat points and let you choose where to place them, Monster Prom has you take the strangest Cosmo-esque quiz possible in order to match the proper stats with just how much of a sicko you really are. Questions such as – which animal would you have sex with? While there are plenty of other questions to be asked of you, we don’t want to ruin them so we’ll save the rest for you to experience.
Throughout the weeks leading up to prom, you have the option to do various activities located in different areas around the school campus. Maybe you’ll head to class, maybe to the gym or even just hang out in the bathroom. Every decision that you make will cause certain stats to increase or possibly even decrease. Some of the reasoning behind stats going up or down and even the stats themselves are flat out hilarious. Try different combinations each day in order to unlock more events. On occasion, you’ll also be able to buy strange objects.
Each playthrough will only take you around 30 or 60 minutes depending on whether you choose to play the short or full version of the game. At the end of each game you will be tasked with choosing who you want to ask to prom and then waiting for their answer. There are many different scenarios based on the events and choices that you made along the way and in some cases you’ll get a true ending and other times you won’t. You’ll see upon each completion how many new scenarios you’ve encountered and how many endings, scenarios and events you’ve seen altogether.
You and up to three friends can also play local multiplayer as well. With less time leading up to prom than in the single player, you take turns choosing what your character will do until each one has picked something each round. Between days there are fun little games for you and your friends to enjoy that will help choose the order in which you make decisions on the next round. Online multiplayer is coming, but was not available pre-launch in time for the review.
Look for Monster Prom to hit the Steam store on April 27th for $11.99.
Recommendation: Monster Prom is as much a dating sim as Scary Movie is a horror film. It follows the patterns of a normal dating sim and completely flips everything upside down. The beauty of a game like this is that anyone that loves and hates dating sims can find value here. Since it has everything a normal dating sim would have it appeals to that crowd while spoofing the genre can bring joy to anyone that loathes them as well. With witty humor and clever writing you’ll find yourself entertained enough to keep going back and trying out a few different scenarios with hopes of a different outcome than last time. Whether you get a date to the prom or not it’s safe to say you’ll have a good laugh or two along the way.
*Monster Prom was provided to the reviewer by the publishing company but this fact did not alter the reviewer’s opinion*
Check out our Review Guide to see what we criteria we use to score games.
