Platform: PC

Developer: Radial Games Corp.

Publisher: Radial Games Corp.

Release Date: March 18, 2013

Genre: Text-Based Adventure

Nerd Rating: 6.5/10

Reviewed by Princess Psych

Remember when you were little, and you wanted to grow-up to be a dinosaur, or a unicorn, or even a monster? Well Monster Loves You for the PC is the game that will let you do just that. Monster Loves You is a choose-your-own-adventure game where you grow up as a monster and must decide your personality. The personality of your monster is determined by 5 categories: Bravery, Cleverness, Ferocity, Honesty, and Kindness. Will you be strong and brave? Smart and honest? Or a big bully? After you successfully create yourself you must decide the fate of your monster tribe, and even the relationship between monsters and humans, if you manage to make it through the test.

In Monster Loves You, you are born from the vat filled with the goo of dead monsters (hardcore right?). You start swimming about in flesh and goo of your ancestors (I may be exaggerating the gore of this game a little), and before long you must defend yourself against another baby monster and help another. This is where you begin crafting yourself. Do you fight the attacking baby or organize the others to push it away? Do you help the struggling baby or let it die for being weak? No matter how you decide to live your first few days, you will eventually become a monsterling. The rest of the game plays relatively the same, allowing you to choose different scenarios and how you would act in them. As you age you can earn the respect of your fellow monsters by helping them and being an upstanding monster citizen.

Can you pass the test and ascend into elder stage?

Eventually you get really old, and you are brought among the council to see if you will dissolve into the vat, you know, the one you started in, or if you will ascend into elder status. You can get various endings by dissolving into the vat, depending on what personality traits you had. If you have enough respect, and pass tests based on personalities, you can become an elder and help shape the way humans and monsters interact, leading to more endings, making up a total of 20 different endings. Can you get them all?

Choose what you’re going to do, and decide who you’re going to be

The gameplay of Monster Loves You is relatively easy and short. You read the prompt and choose which answer you think will guide you in the direction you want to go. But be careful, sometimes you think you’re doing something brave, and find out that you’re doing something incredibly cowardly or so stupid that you lose cleverness points instead. Of course, once you play the game enough times to get all of the achievements, you know the result of each answer, diminishing the replay value once you find all the endings.

In fact, due to the lack of varying scenarios, once you’ve played the game a few times it becomes downright boring. And while the text based game is easy, the vast array of foreign words, not just names but also made up objects and animals, makes reading some of the prompts feel like you’re floating through a sea of coded words, kind of like reading an advanced physiology book. But the feeling doesn’t last for long. Each game can be completed in under 30 minutes, even shorter if you don’t pass the test and instead dissolve into the vat (I’ve played this game so many times I can finish it in 5 minutes).

The graphics are minimal but adorable. It’s cute and cartoony for kids but at a level that adults can also appreciate. Throughout the game the music changes, turning from soft and simple, to happy and up-beat, to epic and dark as you progress through the game.

 Monster Loves You is a decent game that can be fun the first few times around. But if you’re looking for something like an Elder Scrolls game that will give you endless gameplay options and hours upon hours of fun, well, then go play an Elder Scrolls game.

Written by Nerd Bacon