Monster Prom: First Crush Bundle

Monster Prom is not the kind of game I usually cover, but the decision-making loop here is tighter than it looks from the outside, and I respect that. At its core it is a competitive dating sim where one to four players race through a six-week countdown to prom, building six key stats (Smarts, Boldness, Creativity, Charm, Fun, and Money) and trying to lock down a date before anyone else does. Each turn you choose a campus location to boost a specific stat, then face a randomized event tied to one of six datable monster characters: Polly, Damien, Vera, Liam, Scott, Miranda, and the two newcomers added by the Second Term DLC. The choices inside those events are rarely obvious, which is either the game's best quality or its most frustrating one depending on your tolerance for chaos. The First Crush Bundle pairs the base game with its Second Term expansion, which layers in 149 new events, around 10 new secret endings, two additional dateable characters, and a shop full of items that trigger special story branches. That is a meaningful content increase rather than cosmetic padding, and it makes this the correct entry point for anyone coming in fresh. Second Term also requires all players to own it for online multiplayer sessions, so grabbing the bundle upfront saves friction if your friends want in. Where the game genuinely surprises is in the multiplayer mode. Playing against friends unlocks weekend events set in Monstropolis, a turn-order mechanic driven by group questions, and a gossip system where you can actively sabotage rivals' reputations with Madlib-style slander. That competitive layer turns what would otherwise be a short visual novel into a party game with actual stakes. Reviewers have noted that the comedy lands harder in a group because the sheer absurdity of the choices is better processed when someone else is also staring at the screen in confusion. Solo runs are fine, but the competitive mode is clearly where the design intent lives. That said, be honest with yourself about what this is. The underlying mechanics are shallow by sim standards: stat checks and randomized event pools, not branching narrative trees with consequence-tracked variables. Critics have pointed out that repeated playthroughs can start to feel grind-adjacent once you have seen enough of the event pool, and the lack of clear feedback on which stats map to which character preferences makes early runs feel more like guessing than strategizing. The writing, done by Cory O'Brien, Maggie Herskowitz, and Julian Quijano, leans hard into postmodern absurdism and self-aware humor, which works consistently, but players who dislike that flavor of comedy will find nothing underneath it to hold onto. The art by Arthur Tien is genuinely distinctive, and the voice cast across both games includes names like Arin Hanson, Dan Avidan, Cristina Valenzuela, Felicia Day, and Jacksepticeye, which gives the characters more personality than the short runtime would otherwise allow. For a strategy-minded player, the honest recommendation is to treat this as a short-session party game rather than a deep sim. Sessions run roughly 30 to 45 minutes, the randomized event structure gives it legs across multiple playthroughs, and the competitive multiplayer mode adds enough read-the-room decision-making to keep things interesting. Just do not go in expecting stat optimization to reliably translate into success. Some of that is intentional design chaos, and once you accept that, the bundle delivers solid value for the content volume across both games.

Diego · Scout Team

Strategy & simulation

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