Quick Look: Monster Prom

Jeffy Baks!

Jeff Jeff Jeff!

Wow this writing and dialogue. I guess when you know it's a visual novel you need to lower your expectations but this is monkey cheese dishwasher random like an aol chat room in the late 90s. ;)

Terrible.

Wait... is this just The Yawhg?

I don't know if that's quite fair. If you want an example of this game, but without all that junk, I'd highly recommend checking out The Yawhg from 2013. The mechanics are nearly identical, but the writing doesn't lean nearly as hard on cheap stereotypes and the choices presented actually give the player some agency.

Yeah concurring with this, play The Yawhg instead.

The way a lot of Visual Novels center around odd dating is really weird but I guess that’s the hentai game roots showing through.

This like the Yawhg mixed with a dating sim, which is a cool premise. I also like Principal Giant Spider.

This game seems terrible. Between the awful writing and the type of generic art style, it's like some AI made a game based on a bunch of random Tumblr blogs.

Oh, I get it! It´s a Yawhg-like.

I do hope Jeff B gets onto a Quick Look for a better game at some point in the future.

Fantastic.

One drink for every comment mentioning The Yawhg as if it's a new observation.

Yes.

What's with the surf music in he beginning?

(Not just in the beginning it would seem)

I just don't understand how someone can make what is essentially a clone of a game that came out 5 years earlier, and somehow made it mechanically worse.

"ts a little juvenile" its a game about kids/teens thats the idea

I have played this game a lot with friends via Discord screen sharing and have had a real blast with it. It hits my humor sensibilities in a great spot and I find the writing and characterization mostly charming and funny.

The game itself does have a consistency to how you build up affection based on your stats, so it's not just random. Effectively each "choice" has a base stat it checks against and a positive result (your stat being higher than the required amount) gives you influence with the character the choice favors. Once you know, for example, Polly likes to do drugs and party, you can see the choices that lead to these outcomes. Yeah, it's mechanically kinda simple but there is plenty of unique dialogue scenarios and specific endings that it does have quite a bit of replay-ability.

Also the developers call out The Yawhg post credits as an influence.

Why did Jeff say "Laurel" at the beginning of the video?

Laurel? He clearly said "Yanny".

More games should have surf rock soundtracks imo.

Something happened on the internet recently...

Also, man, a lot of sourpusses in the comments.

It's like youtubers worked on this game.

This feels like a game I could enjoy watching other people play if the people are funny enough (and Alex/Abby/Bakalar all are) but wouldn't really be interested in playing myself. The writing/humor feels like a mashup of a bunch of early '00s webcomics, which is very much not to my taste anymore but I also think I've probably aged out of this game's target audience.

I seem to be in the minority by thinking the writing is okay, if a bit heavy on the random "timely" references. I would've enjoyed it a lot more in my teen years but there's still a couple of lines here and there that drew hefty chuckles from me.

@dstopia: To me it seems like it’s trying extremely hard, which i dont know. Is fine to me. But some people have a very strong negative reaction to it

I played this when it first came out a little while. Hung out with a handful of friends and at first, it was this sort of half chuckle stuff as we were trying to get into it. By the end of our game, we were just dead and then finally angry. Each line was just infuriating and the jokes just kept going on. It's sort of the Robot Chicken style of humour where there's this belief that just saying a funny concept is enough to be funny.

The format seems to be saying the joke, then the joke a few more times (then an aside in brackets explaining the joke) followed by a narrator stating that this was a joke. What about the idea of s sports montage? Not actually making a sports montage but saying the word 'sports montage' about 5 times. I kid you not there is a joke stolen from arrested development where someone tries to pretend to be a chicken by saying cakoo-ca-cha. I don't know if the idea of a joke was referencing another joke was the joke but maaaan... It's very bad.

If you find the concept of cocaine to be funny... not a joke about cocaine or anything just the word cocaine, or sex, or a drawn-out reference to some TV show... you might like this game?

Obviously, I have a lot of thoughts about it but if you were put off by the writing in this quick look, it's not even the worst of it. There is very little to love or enjoy about this bad game.

This seems cute, but I kinda' hate the writing. The whole "monster" angle is also just wasted, as you could easily replace any and all of these characters with normal-ass "high-schoolers" and very little would be different.

I want a "real" Monster Mash, damn it!

Played this with a friend a couple of times, I really like, it's got a lot of character, I love the art. I don't care if it's a copy of something else, that means jack shit to me.

File under

'Really Great'

Waypoint podcast also talked about the weird focus on cocaine a couple weeks ago

It's a shame Vinny's on vacation, because I feel like he would've made The Yawhg connection (it seemed like he had a fondness for The Yawhg back when the staff played it a few times before he went to GBE).

That said, there's definitely a lot of overblown hate directed towards this game in the comments. I think Monster Prom definitely has it charms.

Not showing a full run of the game is perhaps a disservice, but I get the justification for that. It seems unlikely, but perhaps we can explore one in a GBE Playdate when Vinny's back. I'd like to hear his thoughts on it on the podcast at least.

Please don't say someone's opinion is overblown or wrong the writing in this is not funny and if you like it that's cool but it's bad to many others. It can go both ways there is a lot of overblown love directed towards this game. See how opinions work?

I don't think we need to play or see more of this game to change someone's mind that it isn't a terrible visual novel with bad writing. It's clear after this quick look more wouldn't change that.

Now if you wanna talk about a good visual novel let's see the reaction after some Nekopara or huniepop ?

I wonder how much longer before we get a battle royale dating simulator visual novel. Probably not that far from now.

Man I wish giant bomb showed more Japanese visual novels instead of the hottest YouTube bait like this and dream daddy.

jeff bakalar is fantastic

I actually like the writing and art of this, but Im around the age of these characters so that's probably why. With that said, all the cocaine talk is weird...

Wow, cool "subtweet" I guess?

Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, sure. I'm of the opinion that "I guess when you know it's a visual novel you need to lower your expectations but this is monkey cheese dishwasher random like an aol chat room in the late 90s. ;)" is a step beyond "hey this game is bad" but whatever.

@moustachewalker: others who have played it confirmed the writing is lackluster. I was poking fun at their writing style. I would actually like if they showed a well written visual novel but most of these games are featured on kotaku so that is probably where they get the idea to show off the funny dating games and not the serious ones.

The visual novels I always hear thwt are really worth it are fate and steins gate that aren't just hentai themed since that is what most visual novels are it seems. I also don't know what a subtweet so thanks I guess.

Came to watch the video, stayed for this comments section.

The writers think the idea of cocaine is hilarious. It assumes you also think that just seeing the word 'cocaine' will make you laugh.

Yeah, no thanks.

I played 3 games and gave up. The first 2 felt like I was just making bad choices, but the the third game I felt like I did everything perfect and still failed. My target date liked me and was happy every day, and the day before prom I went on a date where they said they really liked me. Then prom came and they hated me apparently? Just made me realize if that play through didn't get a good ending nothing will. Unless I play with a guide. Plus by game 3 I started seeing the same conversations.

Wait, is this the new NHL? Why is Jeff Bakalar here?

There’s something to this game... I might check it out

I like the humor, but the fact that everything seems like dice rolls is disappointing. The whole point of a dating-sim is to have some influence with the choices and outcome. Love teh humor, love teh art, love teh characters and some of the narrative elements...but they seems to steal control of the outcome from the player.

I'm not usually a fan of litigation, but my opinion of the Yawhg dropped considerably after watching this because I assumed it was another title by the same company. After digging into it a bit and saw some youtuber made it, I realized that's the world we live in today, games by streamers, for streamers.

As others have noted (here and on Waypoint), the cocaine dosing "comedy" is in pretty rotten taste.