An interactive story that brings a smile to your face.
Definitely one for the kids, but I’m not going to lie I really enjoyed playing through this one. It oozes charm.
Monster Loves you!
Platforms: Switch, PC
Age rating: 3
Players: 1
Category: Simulation, Adventure, Puzzle
Made by: Radial Games & Dejobaan Games
Price: Switch (£8.99), PC (£6.99)
“Live the life of a monster, from birth in the slime vats to elderhood and beyond, making decisions that affect the world of Monster and Humans in this story-book adventure.”
I’ll be totally honest, I went into this game not knowing entirely what it was going to involve. I knew that it was a decision-based game, and that as you made different choices your Monster’s statistics went up or down based on how you chose to behave.
What I didn’t realise was that it was purely based on choosing those narratives and that there is no character control or any real in-depth mechanics. I realised this within about 2 minutes of play, and after about 3 minutes of play, I really didn’t care, it was great.
What’s it about?
At the start, your little monster (monsterling) is born into a big vat of slime. You get a few choices around how you look and you get given a few base statistics. These are split between Kindness, Honesty, Ferocity, Cleverness and Bravery. You also have an additional gauge measuring respect.
You select your way through a few different scenarios and start to build up points in different areas based on your choices.
Each scenario plays out with a number of choices, and you can gain multiple stats in different attributes along the way. One thing I did really enjoy was the way you choose your scenario based on a tiny little illustration and never really know what it’s going to be until you jump in.
How does it progress?
The game is split into different areas, and in each area, you have a certain amount of ‘time’ (seen in the top left of the screenshot above). So after you’ve played out a few missions, your monster will have made some degree of progress moving on to the next area.
You go from Monsterling to adolescent, and then all the way up to elder throughout your game and without too many spoilers, my session involved going from the slime tank to the town of Omen and then onto the big bad world (where I think my first adventure involved helping a group of frogs choose their new king).
At the end of each life stage, you’re presented with some progress on how your attributes are looking.
Your choices do matter
When you’re a young monster, your choices shape your personality a lot. You get lots of points here and there, and the scales move about more. But as you grow up, you’re less malleable to the world and your attributes start to impact how successful you are in certain adventures. If you’re making a decision that requires fighting another monster but that’s not how you’ve played up to that point, you might not be quite so successful.
There aren’t any dice checks or saving throws like you might come to expect from other role-playing games. All the checks are done by the game and there’s no real feedback as to why things went a certain way, but honestly, that’s totally OK.
Look and feel
The way this game feels (and makes you feel) is absolutely fantastic. I’m a 29 year old “grown-up” and I found myself laughing along the way and there’s definitely a strong risk of a warm fuzzy feeling at certain points.
The visuals overall are really lovely, and they fit the tone of the game perfectly. The music too is just the right amount of enjoyable without being distracting, as this is probably the first game I’ve ever played where the first thing I did wasn’t turning the music volume right down.
Above all, I have to credit the writing. Given that this makes up for pretty much the entire game, it’s just grand. I’m definitely one for skim reading quest text in other games, but I basically read a short book playing through this game (yes, a children’s book).
Pros and cons
+ Visually beautiful
+ Brilliant for young children, and playthroughs with family
+ Music and writing really well done
– Can be pretty short if you make certain choices
– Not much repeatability
The verdict
I really enjoyed playing through this game. If I had kids, this is definitely something I would want to sit down and play with them. It’s easy to understand, super visually engaging and offers a lot in terms of teaching about how certain decisions can have certain consequences.
Despite it being clearly aimed at a younger audience, for the reasonable price point, it’s a really nice little playthrough and will definitely leave you feeling good.
You can pick it up both on Switch and PC. It does say on their website that it’s on iOS and Android but I couldn’t find any working links.
