I was never into the visual novel genre much, which given my enjoyment of walking sims and similar narrative heavy games seems odd. I think it’s partly because they are usually dating sims, a genre I’m not crazy about, & Japanese, which is a culture I’m not familiar with. But I had seen some playthroughs of Monster Prom and played a round with my sister and I enjoyed it enough to give it a try.
I know goofy dating sims as a punchline is a joke that was beat to death around the time of the KFC dating game, and Monster Prom seems to be another one. You attend monster high school where you flirt with monsters & ask one to prom. At face value, it seems like another absurdist dating game, but there’s more going on under the surface. There’s a focus on humor, but there’s also effort put into it. It’s not just “lol, dating sims”. The characters all have personalities that play off each other in humorous ways. The game is self-aware, but not annoyingly so. They play up the monster angle with you committing casual murder or enslaving lesser beings. The omnipresent narrator adds in some very dry humor and snark that I appreciated the most.
Gameplay is fairly basic. You have 6 weeks to woo a monster and each week involves three rounds, morning class, lunch, and evening class. At the start of the round, you choose where to go: class, gym, bathroom, etc., and then you get swept up in some event with the other characters. There’re stats like smarts, charm, and fun you have to manage as each prom date requires a range of certain stats. You can increase these by going to certain locations and doing well in dialogue. If you fail a dialogue, you’ll end up losing points. Sometimes even in a full game, getting the required amount of points to persuade a prom date isn’t easy. It leads to the last part of the game feeling useless, because you know you are going to lose.
This game is also unique for a dating sim in that it’s meant to be played as a party game. You can play it single player just fine, but it is geared more towards the multiplayer. There’s some randomness built in that works better with more players but does mean that if you want to see all of the endings you will have to repeat a lot of the same events over and over again. Luckily, it’s easy enough to click through them quickly. You have the option of playing a full game or a short game. I went with the full game because I was unsure if I could get the special event endings in the short game.
A game like this that is based on nothing but dialogue means the characters have to stand out. The possible prom dates are all high school archetypes; the jock, the popular girl, the nerd, the party girl, the outcast, etc. Having the archetypes help you make informed decisions when choosing your dialogue, though there’s always a bit of randomness at play. Scott the Jock is more likely to appreciate the brawns option over the brains, Liam the hipster nerd prefers answers that make him more aloof and “cool”. While the base goal is getting a date to prom there are special events that pop up occasionally. These are randomly chosen and allow you to complete additional objectives to woo your prospective date. They can range from helping a vampire become prom king to helping stage a peasant uprising against the mermaid kingdom.
How I can best describe the art style is akin to the old Teen Titans cartoon, sort of a Western version of anime. The characters pop with color and expression but aren’t overly designed. A nice touch is their outfit changes based on location: gym clothes for PE, costumes for theater class, etc. There’s no real animation in the game, just stills. Each character has a pose or two and they cycle through a set of facial expressions. The backgrounds are unicolored water-colored scenes, like a basketball court or bathroom. Most of the dialogue is text based, the only voice acting is little barks the characters have when they first show up. I usually prefer full voice acting but given that you may be repeating certain scenarios over and over, I’m okay with this being mostly text based.
There’s a certain vibe to this game that pries at my nostalgia. I think part of it is that Teen Titan art style. And I’d hazard a guess the developers are probably close to my age because the game has millennial sensibilities and humor. It reminds me of high school circa 2008, though I was a band geek, and those teen sex comedies of the time. It's bit raunchy, but never graphic. The end credits song is a perfect crystallization of that nostalgic feeling. It made this a cozy game that was easy to replay through, even with all the repetition.
All in all, Monster Prom is a fun little diversion. It’s fun with friends, but just as enjoyable by yourself. The repetition discourages trying to complete all the scenarios in long gaming sessions. It’s very much built to play in short bursts. The humor and nostalgia of this game definitely clicks with me and the characters are endearing. I’d recommend this game for a quick lark and Monster Prom must’ve done well enough because it got 2 sequels.
