I’m in a Toxic Relationship with Monster Camp XXL

I can’t really explain what compelled me to download Monster Camp XXL. Its predecessor, Monster Prom, quickly wore out its welcome for me with its over the top edginess and fairly shallow characterization of the player character. While the monster love interests were hot and at least somewhat interesting, the game ultimately fell flat for me as I spent more time with it. Doing more of the same didn’t really interest me, so I didn’t pick up the sequel when it first came out. But for some reason, while browsing the Nintendo eShop, I felt the urge to give it a shot.

I can’t say that my experience with Monster Camp has really been that much different than my time with Monster Prom. The premise is mostly the same; you choose an avatar and some items that give you stats, then head off to camp where you can do activities to boost your stats and have encounters with your primary love interest to try and impress them. The monsters you can date this time around are different, with the exception of Damien, but the mechanics are largely the same.

Monster Camp’s dialogue and writing are dripping with the same edgy, “look at all the crimes I do” tone, and your player character is textually a pretty insufferable person. The game delights in reminding you of that – pointing out how much of a boundary crossing creep you can be and how all your friends are aware you have ulterior motives to bang them. It’s a weird and unpleasant magnification of the dating sim pitfall of reducing romance to numbers, where the objects of your affection are viewed as, well, objects to be won. Though there are moments where the player character shows signs of improving some of these traits, it’s not the focus of the game. Which mostly left me wondering who or what it’s even there for.

There’s definitely an implied aspect of comedy to the player character; the game seemingly wants you to chuckle at how “pathetic” your character is when they fail on a wacky choice or get rejected by one of the love interests. Part of this is frustrating because the game doesn’t provide explicit information about which choices are tied to which stats, so understanding exactly what your odds are is out of the question. You can use in-game currency earned from completing runs to buy expansions to the game manual that give generalized descriptions of what kind of person each love interest likes and which stats the binary choices in encounters relate to, but there’s no discrete labeling of that info. If you inuit incorrectly, you’ll fail the choice and look like a fool, with no real way to have stopped it other than having made the other choice (which you may also have failed if your stats are off).

But beyond that, these jokes at the protagonist’s expense kind of just make me wonder why any of the love interests would even want to date the player character anyway. All of the other campers vocalize that they think the player is at best a horny weirdo, and at worst a light stalker. In one scenario, you hold a preemptive funeral for yourself and have all your friends give toasts. Should you fail on your stat roll, they’ll basically only remember how horny you were and your love interest will bail. No matter how much you improve your stats, it doesn’t really seem to improve your actual personality, just the way people respond to it. That same encounter can go differently if you roll well, but it’s not an improvement of you, just people’s reactions.

This ultimately results in a dating sim that doesn’t really feel romantic, cute, or sexy. There’s no narrative bridge between the other campers being skeeved out by your reputation and past behavior and wanting to be with you, especially when your character admits during runs that they only want to make the numbers go up so they can successfully fuck.

That’s not to say that dating sims can’t or shouldn’t dive into forms of relationships or storytelling that deals with non-cutesy or sweet romances. But I just don’t really understand who this game is actually trying to be for. Though the game acknowledges the player character’s weird/bad behavior, it’s not really saying anything about it one way or the other. So long as you can leverage your stats correctly, you’ll get the person you choose, which could be a critique of the genre, but it doesn’t feel like it is. There’s no subversion, just acknowledgment of what you’re doing without any further dissection.

Combining that with the overly vulgar obsession with violence, committing crimes, drinking fucked up booze and being horny, Monster Camp is largely more unpleasant than not (though the game does have a way to toggle different subject matter that could be upsetting or triggering for folks). But despite that, it has a compelling game loop. I don’t like this game’s tone or execution, and I’m not having a ton of fun playing (though I will admit that a few jokes have gotten a chuckle from me), but I keep starting runs because I want to win at least once, god damn it.

Thanks to the vagaries around stats’ correlation to choices (and additional weirdness that certain drinks from the bar mini game can introduce), failing to win over a potential love interest is easy, which makes it all the more enticing to try and get someone to go to the meteor shower at the end of camp with you. Beyond that, Monster Camp uses a pseudo-roguelike format; the game features runs and each one unlocks new items, events, characters, currency and potential secret endings, depending on the player’s choices and encounters. As a roguelike deckbuilder head, I cannot deny my compulsion to walk away with at least one successful run, which has since spiraled into trying to get as many events and secret endings as possible.

So now I’ve spent quite a few hours on a game that I don’t particularly enjoy or find successful as a dating sim, all because I have a sick little gremlin brain. I guess I fit into this cast after all.

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