In the name of full transparency, I want to start this review by disclosing that I purchased Monster Prom XXL for only $5 on the Microsoft store when the game recently went on sale. I had no intention of thoroughly playing this game, though. I had a friend staying over, and, knowing very little about the game, thought Monster Prom XXL would be the kind of game we would play for a few minutes as a joke, much like how hundreds of Twitch Streamers and YouTubers hopped on the now-infamous Gollum game that came out a few months ago. Despite my early intentions, things did not turn out that way whatsoever, as my friend and I ended up playing the game for nearly 5 hours straight in our first sitting, only stopping when we checked our watches and realized it was now 2AM.
Part dating simulator, part board game, Monster Prom XXL places players in the shoes of one of four school students attending the one and only Spooky Academy. After choosing your character, you’ll learn that Spooky Academy’s much-beloved prom is but just a few weeks away, and you are tragically still without a date. From there, you’ll be briefly introduced to each of the eight monstrous bachelors and bachelorettes you’ll be attempting to woo in the hopes of finding a partner for prom season. From there, you’ll be dropped into a brief but campy personality quiz in which each answer chosen will craft your character’s base stats and can even give you a head start on romancing some of the monsters you’ll be encountering.
Once you finish the quiz, you’re free to begin exploring Spooky Academy. Players can choose which curricular activities they want to pursue during the day and evening, which will be crucial for raising stats such as Boldness, Charm, Creativity, and even your ever-important Money stat. Each activity will raise a particular stat – for example, choosing to ignore academic responsibility and instead party outside with your peers will increase your Fun stat. You may be wondering what these stats are for – they’re actually thresholds you’ll have to meet in order to successfully ask a student to prom! Each of the 8 romanceable students in Monster Prom XXL has different hidden stat requirements that players will have to match in order to convince them to go to prom with you. For example, if you wish to take the hipster vampire Liam de Lioncourt to prom, you’ll need to do more than just flirt with him all the time – you’ll need to make sure you have high enough points in Smarts and Creativity to win him over. That being said, you’ll still need to chat frequently with your potential love interest, as they each will need a specific level of affection towards you to reciprocate your feelings. The exact number you’ll need for your stats to successfully woo your love interest is carefully hidden from the player, forcing you to do a good deal of guesswork to figure out what exactly your potential prom date wants from their next partner. The lack of clarity with the game’s romance system makes it difficult for new players to understand why a monster rejected their invitation to prom, but this should become more intuitive on repeat playthroughs.
Improving your character’s stats is certainly important, but let’s be real – we’re all here to play a dating simulator! Littered throughout the game are a plethora of events, which are essentially scenarios where players will be thrust into awkward situations alongside some of the game’s bachelors and bachelorettes, in which you’ll have to choose the solution to the problem at hand. Monster Prom XXL has hundreds of hundreds of possible events and scenarios to thrust players into, ranging from helping your classmates cheat on a test to orchestrating the assassination of the school’s water polo team. Regardless of the topic at hand, these answers matter – a correct answer can earn you both bonus stats and favor with the monster of your dreams, while choosing incorrectly can cause you to lose a great deal of stats and lock you out of certain endings. Choosing the right answer isn’t easy, either – oftentimes, the solutions to choose from are abstract and largely unrelated to the problem at hand, forcing terrified players to try to guess what their potential prom date would pick in this scenario. While this could be frustrating for some, Monster Prom XXL‘s dialogue is snappy, witty, and wonderfully self-aware, making the hundreds of events and possible outcomes all the more enjoyable.
Of course, all the events and scenarios you’ll be dropped into wouldn’t be nearly as engaging if Monster Prom XXL didn’t have a stellar cast. Luckily for us, the developers at Beautiful Glitch have done an excellent job at crafting an excellent cast of characters to party at Spooky Academy with. The monsters you’ll be trying to date come off as pretty one-note at a first glance, like Vera the hyper-capitalist gorgon, Miranda the genocidal mermaid, or Scott the dimwitted werewolf. One you get past the rather simple first impressions and actually start talking to the monsters, however, you’ll see that each character has a good deal of depth to them. While I found each of the romanceable monsters to be highly entertaining, my personal favorite was Polly Geist, a ghost who spends most of her time partying, getting wasted at school, or a combination of both. Now, many of Polly’s events involve pranking her friends, going to parties, or helping her figure out ways to get even more high, but you’ll also get some cute snippets about how deeply Polly cares about her friends, while also having surprisingly wholesome opportunities to help her come to terms with undeath. These heavier scenes in are almost always still framed in some degree of a comedic lens (this is still a party game, after all!), but overall do a wonder for providing more complexity to the initially straightforward cast of monster students.
In a welcome addition to the party game genre, Monster Prom XXL puts in a genuine effort to encourage inclusivity. Upon choosing a character at the beginning of any playthrough, players are encouraged to pick their own pronouns upon choosing a character. Additionally, any and all dateable monsters can be romanced regardless of sex or gender identity, leaving the dating field open for players of all kind. For those who are turned off by some of the more problematic aspects of high school dating simulators, I have good news – Beautiful Glitch is also keenly aware of these negative tropes, choosing to have their cast of romanceable monsters largely be in their early 20’s, with the youngest being Miranda at 19 years old. Keeping the cast older allows Monster Prom XXL to feature naughty-but-hilarious skits about sex, drugs, alcohol, and the occasional murder while helping to make sure players don’t get too uncomfortable.
Monster Prom XXL‘s brief playthroughs usually last for about an hour at the longest, but the game achieves a good deal of replay value through repeat sessions. There are dozens of secret endings and hundreds of unlockables to find, encouraging players to try new strategies and answer prompts differently on repeat playthroughs. Some of these secret endings simply provide more backstory and context to the romanceable monsters, while others will let you ask a previously-undatable NPC to prom, such as Spooky Academy’s resident shopkeeper Valerie, the monster hunter Aaravi, or even the game’s nameless narrator. While these secret endings add a great deal of value for multiple playthroughs, Monster Prom XXL can still become somewhat stale and repetitive if you focus too much on finding secrets instead of the usual love and laughs.
A party game at heart, Monster Prom XXL is at its’ finest when playing with friends. The game supports both local and online multiplayer, allowing friends to compete with each other to hunt down the perfect prom date. At the start of every turn, players will each have to answer an often-comedic question that will determine player order, which can be highly important, as multiple players cannot visit the same location in the same turn. If all four players want to go to class to increase their Smarts stat, three players will be out of luck, as locations are all first come, first serve. This can be especially brutal on Lunch turns – lunch tables are also first come, first serve, meaning that your friends can and will block you from sitting next to your crush that day. At the end of every three turns, one player will be chosen at random for a Weekend Event, giving them an opportunity to either help or hinder another player’s romantic standing with a monster. As a whole, these multiplayer experiences let players decide whether they want to treat Monster Prom XXL as more of a co-op experience where everyone tries to get a prom date, or instead turn the game into a romantic bloodbath where players self-sabotage each other to hell and back.
While Monster Prom XXL was clearly designed to be a party game, you can still try to mingle with Spooky Academy’s monster population as a single player, no pun intended. Single player runs can be helpful if you are trying to unlock all of the game’s secret endings, or just trying to woo a particular monster you’ve been gunning for. Solo players are at a notable advantage as they try to win hearts, as they don’t need to compete with other players for stat-boosting activities or for the best seat at lunch time. That being said, the lack of competition took away some of the fun of the game for me. If you’re looking at this game as a dating simulator instead of a party game, it’s hard to recommend it – Monster Prom XXL‘s runs are short and sweet, making it hard to genuinely get attached to a monster you’re romancing in a particular run. The plethora of endings and events creates a great deal of replay value, sure, but trying out new playthroughs and strategies seems best experienced alongside a friend or two.
That being said, Monster Prom XXL has a plethora of features that stand on their own, one of them being the game’s art and aesthetic as a whole. The character art illustrated by Arthur Tien is gorgeous and charming, creating a vibrant, cartoony style to match the absurd comedic writing you’ll be experiencing through your time at Spooky Academy. Despite being a game with minimal voice acting and somewhat brief romantic subplots, Tien’s art breathes so much energy and character into the residents of Spooky Academy, whether it be the full-body character art or the cute polaroids you unlock at the end of each run. It’s also worth noting that the excellent art and character writing in Monster Prom XXL is presented alongside a wonderfully funky soundtrack. The track list is fairly short, but the groovy music certainly helps to set the tone for the game’s brilliantly absurd monster dating shenanigans.
As a whole, Monster Prom XXL does a stellar job at taking the tried-and-true dating simulator formula and flipping it on its’ head to create one of the most wonderfully ridiculous party games out there. While learning how your stats affect your character’s dating potential may seem confusing at first, competing with your friends to try and figure out how to take your favorite monster to prom will always be an absolute blast. Accompanying the slapstick multiplayer gameplay is equally well-crafted character writing and art design, making your adventures through Spooky Academy all the more enjoyable. That being said, Monster Prom XXL loses a lot of its’ magic in the more tedious single player mode, making it a hard game to recommend if you don’t have friends willing to join you. However, if you do have friends that are either looking for an alternative to Jackbox or simply want to romance an eldritch deity in front of their peers, Monster Prom XXL may be a match made in hell.