Monster Conning

Birthday Edition: A Monstrous Romance Romp

It’s my birthday today!

For the weekend’s celebrations, I whisked two friends and my wife away for the new Monster Prom 4: Monster Con. We took turns pursuing amorous targets: a creepy-cute clown, a cosplay-obsessed mimic, a ruthless overlord trying (often unsuccessfully) to reform, and the hipster vampire that essentially serves as her parole officer. After two-and-a-half hours, three of us got our dates. The overlord eluded her paramour. But success in this multiplayer dating simulator isn’t really the point — the sharp writing and ludicrous comedy kept us chortling all night.

My wife and I have adored the Monster Prom series since I first learned about it from the rowdy Drawfee YouTube channel. More than its past games, Monster Con puts its charming art under the spotlight. The six main romanceable characters switch outfits depending on the encounter. Between story hijinks, players collaborate on a mad-libs comic that you’ll get treated to at the end of the fictional fan convention. And if you want to throw some extra cash at the indie devs, oodles of DLC playable characters come with a slew of unique images.

I can’t yet tell if Monster Con will be my favorite of the franchise. Its sense of humor is more wholesome than Monster Prom’s, which often reached for Cards Against Humanity shock value. It revises the stat-manipulating drinks mechanic that was so easy to exploit in Monster Camp. And while it returns to form after the experiments of Monster Roadtrip, Monster Con rethinks the dating-sim math by forcing you to sacrifice some stats to gain others. But you also can’t fail an encounter challenge, giving players more breathing room to pick whatever option tickles them best.

The resulting game is as uproarious as ever. I just hope I can find the friends and the time to uncover more of its dozens of secret endings!

Other Mastromarino Productions

• Chinese animated film ends record theatrical release as country's animation industry surges

• Colorado Republican Gabe Evans on supporting Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill'

• Dalai Lama confirms reincarnation search plans outside China, escalating Beijing-Tibet tensions

• Helped get this Jonathan Lambert piece on-air: USAID has saved 91 million lives, study finds

• NOAA delays cutoff of satellite data for hurricane forecasting amid budget cut fallout

• Russian drones and missiles hit Western Ukraine in biggest air assault since war's beginning

• Finally, my colleague Thomas Danielian revisited the controversy around Assassin’s Creed Shadows in this segment hosted by Here & Now’s Robin Young: She was a victim of online harassment. Then she reached out to one of her trolls