Monster Loves You! is what happens when Sesame Street joins with the original Grimm fairy tales. A joint effort between Radial Games and Dejobaan Games - whose previous efforts include AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! Reckless Disregard for Gravity and the misleadingly-titled Drunken Robot Pornography, which we reviewed recently.
Starting from the spawning point of all monster kind - a giant vat of goo - you select what type of core characteristics you want to have: brain or brawn, known for actions or thoughts. Depending on your choices, you are allocated points in one of five traits - Cleverness, Ferocity, Honesty, Kindness and Respect. These traits become more important as the game progresses.
The birthing vat serves as the game’s tutorial, introducing basic game mechanics when a fellow monster wants to make you its first meal. After a brief description of the situation, you’re presented with multiple choices: do you turn the table on it, rally the other newborns to your aid to dispatch the threat, or act as a diversion to allow other smaller newborns to escape? The choices vary slightly depending on the selected genetic disposition, but the outcomes are ultimately the same - earning you additional points in one or more of the traits, depending on how you choose to handle the situation.
Before you leave the vat of monster goo, you find another new monster who isn’t faring too well. You can aid its struggles or, in a rather dark fashion, simply stand watch as it dissolves and dies in front of you.
This may sound pretty grim (and it is), but it’s worth noting that none of this is ever displayed visually. Monster Loves You! is presented as a visual novel, where the background changes throughout your monster’s life, but the choices and your actions are only represented by a descriptive text box. Limited as they are, the visuals should not be overlooked entirely; the bright and colorful illustrations would not be amiss in any children’s book. The music also deserves a special mention, adding a little extra character to the experience as a whole. The consistent bass during adolescence conjurers up an image of each individual footstep on a journey towards unavoidable adulthood, which the game is keen on reminding you when you try and prevent yourself from growing up.
During your monster’s life you go through four or five stages: newborn, child, adolescent, adult and finally elder. The monster’s life is short and fairly predictable it seems, with each period only lasting a few days. What days you have are spent completing adventures - during which you will be faced with more choices and consequences. Occasionally, to successfully complete your selected course of action you will face a skill test against one of your traits. Annoyingly though, when a skill check is required you aren’t able to view your current trait values, nor does it tell you what the required values actually are; so when a set of animated dice roll across your screen, the outcome is essentially a shot in the dark.
During the adventures you may encounter a fairytale or two, with Hansel & Gretel and the Big Bad Wolf showing up as potential food for your monster. Dejobaan has also managed to slide in a little life lesson or two among the possible adventures. One occasion allows you to step in to prevent some fellow monsterlings bullying another. A later task deals with telling someone they smell bad (but not in a good monster way) when the other monsters won’t play with him. It’s not all edu-tainment though: playing Monster Loves You! with a human mindset may help you create a kindness monster (if you are that way inclined) but that’s not necessarily a good thing - you are a monster after all.
Once the young and care-free days are over, it’s time to return to the goo from whence you came. Alternatively, if you have gained enough respect during your life leading up to this point, you can compete in trials that will determine whether or not you become a guiding elder. These challenges operate in the same way as adventures and share the same flaws; if you fail to become an elder you must return to the goo to melt, and your essence becomes part of future generations.
As an elder, you now guide and shape the future of the monster town Omen. As before, you still select an adventure - but now rather than altering traits, you can change how monsters view humans or vice-versa. If your monster is made of the right stuff you can lead your species to eternal peace, an endless war, or one of several variations in-between. You’ll need to play through the game around a dozen or so times before you can witness them all, providing plenty of replay value.
Monster Loves You! is Dejobaan Games’ attempt to poke fun at fairy tales, with a hint of “my first Role-Playing Game” thrown in for good measure. It’s not without its flaws - gameplay is limited and, despite the multiple endings, repeat playthroughs carry a sense of familiarity - but the music is a highlight, and it’s certainly an interesting concept. Overall it’s fun enough to warrant a purchase - and kids will love it - but we can’t help but feel that its casual gameplay is better suited to life on a tablet than it is on PC, so if you pick it up, the tablet version is the format to go for.
