A game of Monster Prom is played over the six - or three - weeks before prom, depending on whether you choose to play a short or long game. Your goal, ostensibly, is to woo one of your six most popular classmates. In each week you get three choices - where to spend your mornings, where to spend your afternoons, and who you sit with at lunch. The morning and afternoon events provide you with a +2 boost to each stat, depending on location, and are followed by an event involving some of your classmates. Your response to those events will, depending on your stats, be successful or not, with the former usually boosting your stats again and the latter dropping them slightly. There's also a chance that the events will increase one or more classmate's affection towards you. If you sit with your classmates at lunch you'll be given a choice, your response to which will boost your affection with one of them. Alternatively, you can sit with some of the characters you're not trying to take to prom, and then you'll get an event which boosts one stat by +4. Again, which stat is dependent on your choice. The game stats that a long game should take about an hour while a short game is half that, but if you read faster than average, it will be shorter. You can't save and abandon a game partway through because they're designed to be played in a single sitting. There's also multiplayer modes for 2-4, which involves people taking turns to play. The game suggests little games/debates to decide who should go first in each round, but you can ignore them and tell the game to randomise instead. Players can't go to the same place or sit at the same table at lunch, or take the same date to prom, so going first can make a difference. In multiplayer mode, there can also be events where one character will ask a player their opinion on another player's character.
All of my images are of Vera because I love her and if you don't, you are wrong.
The game outright tells you how many possibly events and outcomes there are - around 400 for the former and 1500 for the latter - and offers an achievement for seeing all events and another for all possible outcomes. Apparently, 0.1% of players have actually achieved this, and that doesn't include me for the same reason I didn't get the 10,000 kills achievements for Final Fantasy VIII or IX. That is because, in spite of my perfectionist tendencies, I have labelled those achievements as "bloody stupid" and decided to ignore them. There are a total of 52 achievements over Monster Prom and Second Term, and apart from those for seeing all events or outcomes, the only two I'm missing are for making and publishing steam mods. You can also get an achievement for playing the game with someone else's steam mod, because the creators are very supportive of fan-made content. Prior to playing this game, I had no idea Steam had this whole modding system, so that was fun to find out about.
On the main menu, there are a couple of different categories of images you can unlock as you play, often by achieving specific events or endings. A few endings contribute a LOT of polaroids, because they have dramatic events to explain. I do like the fact that each ending gets a single, specific image in 'Endings', because it makes it easier to figure out what possible endings there are and which you might have missed. There's an ending for taking each potential classmate to prom, but taking each character to prom with each of your possible starting characters generates a unique polaroid. There are also special endings based on completing event chains which randomly trigger, or by buying a specific item in-game. Despite the randomness, it's surprisingly easy to aim for a specific event chain. The game is quite good at figuring out who you're trying to woo, for example, which narrows it down quite quickly. It does that based on a personality quiz which sets your starting stats each game and also wins you a few affection points for some characters, and by triggering events which prompt you to make choices which give you affection points for one character instead of another. The item events aren't triggered randomly, so they're even easier to get, except for one. That one is a free gift you can choose, which randomly gives you an item. Many of these items are triggers for specific event-chains, and some of the random items require you to have already seen previous random events, which can be quite frustrating. This was the longest part of unlocking everything the game had to offer, for me, but at least I saw a few more events and outcomes along the way.
Speaking of starting players, there are four, shown above. Each is, by default, identified by the colour of their outfit, but you can choose to go by a default name or a custom name instead. You can also choose whether your pronouns are he, she, or they. There's no difference between them except in the images you can unlock and the images and voice clips played alongside the player dialogue.
Another strength of the game was in the characters. They all have unique personalities, and while each individual game might be short, you learn a lot about them while unlocking all the special endings. Polly, for example, loves Russian literature, and that comes up in several events. Even though it's only a brief mention each time, the way it comes up in so many places fills her out more. Likewise, in some storylines you'll receive a brief mention that Vera is adopted, while in others it doesn't come up at all. Once you've seen a few of the storylines with her family or explaining her adoption, those little throw-away mentions become a wider part of her character.
At the end of the games credits the makers mention The Yawhg, another game I happen to own. I have no idea where I got it from, since I didn't buy it from Steam or Humble Bundle. I can only assume it was a gift. The Yawhg seems to have come first, and is almost identical in play-style. You pick a character, choose where they spend their time over 6 weeks, and then an event happens with one final choice. However, in this case, the characters are building up to an unspecified disaster, and the choice is what role they play in rebuilding the town. There are no characters to interact with - except, for example, the King, who is really a role rather than a person - and there's no indication of how many endings there are or rewards for achieving anything in game. You can't choose to play one character, you have to play 2-4 instead. I played it for 23 minutes, successfully rebuilt the town on my first go, failed on the second go, and felt like I'd seen everything the game had to offer. It probably has other events and might even have other outcomes, but I have no idea what they might be or how to get them, and I'm not all that interested in finding them. I'll be surprised if I ever play it again. It's atmospheric, I guess, but honestly, Monster Prom was a lot more fun, just play that instead.
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