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"Be your worst self"

"Do you know how to conquer a monster’s heart?"

Monster Prom is a dating sim by BeautifulGlitch (Julián Quijano), with art by Arthur Tien.

The game provides a new spin on dating sims, making it a competitive sport in which up to 4 players can choose a protagonist and can either compete to see who gets their date to the prom or work together so both can get their desired partner. The game takes place in a monster's school, three weeks before the dance, and the players try desperately to seduce one of six other students to go to the prom with them.

The game had a successful Kickstarter campaign, garnering over 30 thousand euros and unlocking extra features including new downloadable characters. The game has its website and has a Twitter account. It was officially launched on Steam on April 27th, 2018.

In May 2019, a new Kickstarter campaign was launched for a sequel: Monster Prom 2: Holiday Season, which contains three different game modes and features both new and returning characters. It quickly surpassed the funding of the original game, and by the time the campaign finished, passed enough stretch goals to make its Monster Camp mode a standalone project, and combine the other two modes (Retreat and Roadtrip) with a new one (Isekai). They've also committed to another project, thanks to reaching a very high stretch goal: Monster Prom: Reverse, involving you trying to romance Oz, Amira, Brian, and/or Vicky, the player characters from the original game.

The first sequel, Monster Prom 2: Monster Camp, was released through GOG and Steam on October 24th, 2020, together with two DLC outfit packs (as well as a third, anime-themed outfit pack that was exclusive for Kickstarter backers and those who watched Brizzy Voices' Twitch stream of the game on the day it came out). Future outfit packs, as well as content updates, were made available in the following months. The second sequel, Monster Prom 3: Monster Roadtrip, was released on October 21st, 2022.

NOT to be confused with Monster High, which is very different despite both being set in high schools attended by monsters.


Tropes

  • 100% Completion: The game keeps track of the total amount of secret endings, events and outcomes The Player has seen. A screen at the end of each run shows The Player's progress. There is an achievement for getting 100% in each of those categories, and 50% in the first two.
  • Accidental Truth: In a lunchroom event between Miranda and Vera, you can choose to take a sip of Vera's scotch, then act as if it was poisoned to scare Miranda. After Miranda faints, Vera compliments you on your performance, saying that she should add poison to her scotch more often. Only then does she realize you're probably not faking the symptoms, and that you could probably use the antidote.
  • Actor Allusion: Zoe's Good Ending in Second Term has her accept the player's promposal with "You are worthy of my grace," as a reference to Kaworu's love confession to Shinji in the 2019 English dub of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Zoe's VA, Casey Mongillo, played Shinji in that very dub.
  • All-Ghouls School: A rather humorous and modern take on this. Everyone in the school is some variety of monster, but it's a setting that also includes smartphones, social media, and a generous helping of sex jokes.
  • Age-Gap Romance: Discussed In-Universe. Liam will point that in the fandom of Star vs. the Forces of Evil, it'd be weird to ship Starco due to Marco being technically in his thirties. He also expands that there's no such issue among them since everybody is of age (Miranda is the youngest character at 19).
  • Anti-Frustration Features: Valerie's shop doesn't show up on the last turn. There would be no point in buying items that set off event flags when there are no more events, and the shop appearing in a location could potentially lock a player out of a prom date if they want to raise a specific stat.
  • Anvilicious: In-universe. During the "Dragon Heat" events, Vera can chastise you for your choice of a favorite arc, since it was about the king lying to everyone to try to make an orgy, which leads to a long, but necessary talk about consent.
  • Apocalypse How: A recurring event is the "PRANK MASTERZ" timeline in which Polly and Scott unleash Z'Gord as a prank, which eventually leads to the two Prank Masterz being the only things left alive on Earth. It later turns out that this alternate universe's Joy worked with Liam to escape and seal Z'Gord away into an idol, which you can buy from the shopkeep to romance it. In Monster Roadtrip you can end up teleporting into an alternate timeline in which a post-apocalyptic version of yourself mentions a Z'Gord uprising, implying it's the "PRANK MASTERZ" timeline, but Hope teleports you to another timeline before anybody can elaborate.
  • Arc Words: 'We were young and unafraid'.
  • Ascended Extra: Almost every major love interest added in Second Term and Monster Camp was previously a secretly dateable character. In fact, only Milo is introduced as a brand-new main love interest right off the bat.
    • Several secondary NPCs who were not originally romanceable received their own secret routes in later updates.
  • Bears Are Bad News: In both Monster Prom and Monster Camp.
    • In Prom, Owlbears are something that no one wants to deal with. Olga the owlbear destroys Liam's apartment and Aaravi is forced to fight one as a trial. Both times they are treated as incredibly powerful animals that are as above monsters as regular bears are to humans.
    • In camp, coach keeps bringing up how dangerous bears are.
  • Bedsheet Ghost:
    • Literally. There's a path where you buy a sheet with eyeholes and use it to pretend to be a ghost. Everyone but Liam falls for it, even Polly, who actually is a ghost.
    • In Monster Camp, Joy's "Monster Porm" outfit (where the romantic interests dress as the main romantic interests of Monster Prom) is a bedsheet ghost outfit of Polly.
  • Big First Choice: The opening quiz raises two specific stats, and gives a small amount of affection points to for individual romance options based on the player's choices. There is also a significant hidden benefit of those initial hearts as they greatly increase the chances of encountering your target in random events. While it's not required to date a specific character, it's very hard to get a prom date that doesn't use those benefits.
    • In Second Term you get four questions at the start. The first two are stat boosts, and the last two determine which two classmates you meet at your first event.
    • In Monster Camp, you can pick 3 of 9 items to take with you to camp, with each item offering different stat boosts. You then get one question, and your answer determines which love interest you get paired with.
  • Black Comedy: A truckload of it. Events frequently involve violence, death, destruction, and any number of dark rituals and soul-selling. All of it is played for comedy.
  • Bland-Name Product: There are many peppered throughout the game.
    • The name of the site you can run scams on in the library is StartKicker.
    • You can say there's a brand of Lingerie called Victoria's Seance.
    • Averted in Monster Camp, however, which mostly uses actual brand names.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: Monsters appear to have a much more cavalier attitude towards hardcore drug use, arson, and even murder. On the other hand, the mistreatment of others based on sexual preference and self-identity seems almost nonexistent.
    Scott: Wait! Are you planning on killing Damien's whole family?
    Dahila: Yeah.
    Scott: That's awesome! He'll have so much more time to hang out with us!
  • Bowdlerization: Downplayed, as the game retains its M rating and remains as raunchy as ever, but the console versions of the game, Monster Prom: XXL, replace all mentions of drugs with Unusual Euphemisms (i.e. weed becomes "Jazz Cabbage", cocaine becomes "nose candy", etc.) It still works with the game's humor even if a few jokes get lost in the change. This even resulted in one of the endings for Scott playing out entirely differently on console, though the associated ending CG remains the same in both versions.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:
    • When Liam asks The Player if they've ever heard of "StartKicker", a crowdfunding site, the narrator asks if Liam knows why he exists since Monster Prom was a crowdfunded project on Kickstarter.
    • A classroom event in Second Term involves Miranda and Vera trying to upgrade Calculester, with one of the options specifically referring to the in-game stat system. Succeeding with that option even states that you boost Calculester's stats by going to the same places the player would go to boost theirs Specifically... .
    • Two of the new secret endings in Second Term are fueled by this. In the first one, Liam, Polly, and Scott all realize they're in a video game and try to escape it. In the second, you take the Narrator to the prom.
    • Failing a certain event with Calculester and Mr. Pappas in Monster Camp has Pappas learn that he is currently inside a video game, and cancelling his plans to turn the camp into a shopping mall to instead build a shopping mall inside the game's code! This leads to Calculester and the narrator suddenly discussing great deals and all players having their names changed to "Mall_Client#[number]" for the rest of the game.
    • The final "End of the Road" update to Roadtrip adds a new ending that breaks it so massively, it becomes outright Metafiction. Nine, ten, eleven weeks pass and it's still Summer, with the group neither getting a Game Over nor reaching a Destination. Reality starts breaking down; the rest stop is oddly vacant, the previous week's events start repeating but glitching out midway through, including a mandatory visit to a cave that suddenly seems to warp into a realm of silhouettes and notes about Polly's life stuck to the walls, and back-to-back visits to a motel that rapidly decays. Then there's a sudden tangent where Monster High School shows up and Polly and Scott watch their original character designs enact a deadly prank and regret how reckless they were, followed by a location that's just a bunch of marble statues of Polly displaying her core character traits and a plaque analyzing the humor and tragedy of her "That's how I died!" catchphrase. Polly realizes that nothing is real, and meets one of the silhouettes, who's one of the game's writers. They talk about her status as a fictional character and if everything she's suffered through is just "character development" for a narrative, with the writer claiming that Death of the Author is already in play and genuinely hoping that Polly's stories outlives themself. It eventually reaches the point that Scott is reduced to just his name written in pencil and stating his core character traits, and Polly ultimately chooses to escape the game in a sky-splitting rift created by the glitching and Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence while leaving a small piece behind so the player can reset the world back to normal and continue replaying.
  • Breakout Character:
    • Damien is by far the most popular character in the series. His overwhelming popularity gained him an extra secret ending, maintaining his status as a main romanceable character in the sequel Monster Camp, as well as being Promoted to Playable in Monster Prom: Reverse.
    • Calculester and Zoe are both extremely popular, being eventually promoted to main romanceable characters during Second Term. Both characters return, having been Promoted to Playable in Monster Prom: Reverse. Calculester also returns as a main romance option in the Monster Camp while Zoe was Promoted to Playable in both Camp and Roadtrip via DLC.
    • Dahlia was popular enough that she was one of two characters (along with Damien) to receive physical merch accompanying the release of Monster Camp. She's also one of three previously secret dateable characters to become a main love interest in the sequel (the other two are Aaravi and Joy); and is Promoted to Playable alongside Damien, Zoe, and Calculester in Monster Prom: Reverse.
  • Call-Back: Tons in Monster Camp, to the point there's actually an option to disable references to Monster Prom in case you haven't played it. Doubly so for Monster Roadtrip, with characters appearing from both prior games.
  • College Is "High School, Part 2": Implied. The setting is referred to as a high school, yet the youngest character, Miranda, is 19. The rest are in their twenties (or even older, in the case of Liam and Zoe). Miranda, Damien, Vera and her sister Valerie, and Scott and his Wolfpack cousins are also the only characters in the game who make any reference to living with their parents (or grandparents, in the wolves' case), with the first two coming specifically from high-profile royal families; and students are allowed to drink alcohol in the cafeteria, even if they're under the legal drinking age. All of this is eventually “explained” in Monster Roadtrip: monster society’s understanding of what high school is was based largely on sitcoms and the Dawson Casting was just accepted as fact.
  • Crossover:
    • As of Halloween 2021, Modeus is a playable character in Monster Camp. For the same holiday, Monster Prom itself crossed over into Max Gentlemen Sexy Business!, in the form of a free outfit pack dressing up all that game's major NPCs as Monster Prom characters.
    • For (roughly) Halloween 2023, as evidenced by this trailer, the Lamb from Cult of the Lamb was added to Monster Roadtrip as a hitchhiker with their own events and ending.
  • Cute Monster Characters: The Player characters and main love interests play this straight, what with player being a Lovable Sex Maniac on a chaotic quest to score a date. Subverted in the case of some of the other students, including the Eldritch Abomination you can take to prom (This is also Zigzagged, with said Eldritch Abomination becoming much cuter and more humanoid as Zoe in the Second Term add-on).
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • The Bad Ending for Miranda's Christmas update route. Pheel the Eel succeeds in killing her, and the credits polaroids consist of people mourning her at her funeral, with no music playing.
    • Second Term has Hope's Lore Coupon path, especially the second part. We learn that the Hope we know is the fourth in a line of Hopes, that she occasionally receives memories from these past lives, and that Liam's rift with the Coven runs a lot deeper than "eventually got bored with them." All of it is Played for Drama.
    • The Halloween 2019 update finally reveals how Polly actually died, settling one of the game's Running Gags. Her father was an alcoholic who didn't care how much it was hurting their family. His habits eventually lead to them all getting into a car accident, with him as the Sole Survivor. Polly genuinely tears up at several points as she admits, despite what happened, she still loves him and checks on him from time to time.
  • Deadly Prank: While most of the Prank Masterz' (with a Z!) usual pranks are pretty harmless and even laughable (mainly if you side with Scott over Polly in terms of pranks). It is heavily implied they did once accidentally cause someone's death in a prank during the Greeting Card ending (they're even holding the body in a potato sack). And in the 'Arcane Book' ending, it's played painfully straight in that everyone, including the player, is dead at the tentacles of Z'Gord, except for Scott and Polly.
  • Downer Ending:
    • The Halloween event added one. By purchasing the book of spells in the shop and completing all of its "pranks", you, Polly, and Scott ultimately manage to summon the Eldritch Abomination Z'Gord. It goes about as well as you'd expect: Z'Gord takes over the world, establishing a reign of fear and death, murders almost all of the characters (including you), and there's a series of polaroids showing them futilely trying to escape or fight back. One of the ending polaroids have Liam spell out the sentence "This is the worst possible timeline" with his dying breath. The only ones coming out of this unscathed are, of course, Scott and Polly, whom the "Thank You for playing!" shot shows alive and well, celebrating yet another successful scheme by the Prank Masterz (with a Z).
    • In the Christmas update, the plot by Miranda's subjects to assassinate her for years of abuse and mistreatment is entirely Played for Laughs. However, if you completely screw up the Christmas party, the assassination goes off without a hitch.  Unlike the Black Comedy of the Halloween ending, the resulting ending, Miranda's murder, and everyone's reaction to it are all played dead seriously.
  • Drugs Are Good: The games have a lot of characters using drugs and alcohol, while making it clear that it's just fine to use recreational drugs so long as you're safe and responsible about it by doing things like making sure you know what you're using, doing so only in a safe space, respecting the boundaries of other people regarding drug use, and seeking help if you begin to have issues with addiction.
  • Easter Egg: There is a low chance that one of the tables during lunch is empty. Interacting with it will have the Narrator give a speech about choices and the universe, then say that you have exhausted all of them, and welcome you to "the nothingness." Gameplay-wise all this really does is waste a turn and it's not connected to any secret endings.
  • Early-Bird Cameo:
    • Dahlia, a new character introduced in Valentine's Day 2019 DLC, makes a brief appearance in secret endings added for the Halloween 2018 update and the Christmas 2018 update.
    • Dmitri, another new character in the Second Term, is foreshadowed by both Liam's Halloween costume (he's wearing Dmitri's regular outfit) and the 'ANGELBLOOD' route (where he makes a narration-only appearance in the second event and (depending on what you do) say that he'll be a love interest in the future).
    • The class photo that appears at the end of the game depicts several characters that don't make appearances unless you take specific routes that may or may not need to be unlocked first.
  • Eating the Eye Candy: In a certain event, Scott will rub sauce over his bare chest, and The Player will be into it.
  • E = MC Hammer: In the ending credits, there's a blackboard that's shown in one scene with part of an equation that ends in = Farts.
  • Enfante Terrible:
    • There's an eight-year-old Kraken that Miranda and you can let loose on school. The kid goes on to wreak havoc.
    • One of the options to help Scott prepare the football pep rally is to convince him that it's a pup rally, which results in him turning a bunch of werewolf puppies loose that promptly eat the other team.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: As bad as many of the monsters are, even they can't stand Leonard, an in-universe member of Fan Dumb who acts transphobic towards Zoe and insults everyone for no reason except to be a jerk.invoked
  • Everyone Is Bi: Independent of gender, all romantic options can be romanced by all playable characters. This trope also extends to pretty much everyone in the school. Except Kale and Coach.
  • Evolving Credits: The end credits may change depending on which character you asked out to the Prom and whether or not they agreed to be your date. The picture at the side of the "Thank You for Playing" message will be a changed version of one of the pictures on the credit (or even a different one altogether) with some cute scribbles on it.
  • Fanservice:
    • Each Love Interest has two secret endings, one of those two always has a fanservicey CG of the character wearing little clothes and implications about a new interest in The Player.
    • Furthermore, THE SUPER SECRET ONE ending is an orgy organized by Polly for you and all of your classmates, the CG is of all six Love Interests plus Blobert waiting for you to join them in a hot tub.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • In an event, Vera will mention that Damien has oddly well-manicured fingers for a man. This tidbit turns out to hint at his interest in the beauty industry, which is one of their endings.
    • By going successfully alone to prom once, the narration will mention that you feel ready and confident to go after one — or more — of your classmates. This foreshadows the existence of an orgy ending.
    • During the end credits, the shopkeeper shows up in one of the polaroids hanging out with Vera. It seems a bit random, given that everyone else in the photos plays a major role. Vera is also one of the harder characters to romance. This is foreshadowing the fact that Valerie, the shopkeeper, is both a romance option and Vera's adoptive sister.
      • Further reinforced in two of the polaroids added in the Halloween and Christmas updates, where they depict Vera carrying Valerie to the Oberlin bunker after Z'gord takes over and Vera consoling Valerie at Miranda's funeral, respectively.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: The four playable characters are part of this trope: Vicky is Sanguine (the upbeat and energetic Genki Girl), Amira is Choleric (the tomboyish and passionate Fiery Redhead), Oz is Melancholic (the timid and shy Adorable Abomination), and Brian is Phlegmatic (the laid-back and sleepy Deadpan Snarker).
  • Gender-Equal Ensemble: There are two male and two female playable characters for the six datable characters (three female and three male). The extra content in the Kickstarter includes one more male, one more female, and one way harder to identify.
    • In Monster Camp, Joy's three evil exes are Axarax (non-binary), Salomé (female), and Gerard (male).
  • Genre Refugee:
    • The Coven. They're in the background constantly saving the day, fighting villains and retrieving MacGuffins, acting very much like they're in an Urban Fantasy teen drama like Charmed (1998) or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Every other character is more interested in the absurdist black comedy dating sim already in progress.
    • Aaravi/The Slayer as well, only she's in the middle of an old-school, hack-and-slash, RPG, trying to min-max her stats and equipment.
    • In one Monster Camp event, the player befriends a group of narration-only NPCs who reveal that they're from a survival sim which happens to be set in the same forest.
  • Giant Spider: The principal is one. That's even his name: Principal Giant Spider.
  • Golden Ending: THE SUPER SECRET ONE ending, in which your Lovable Sex Maniac character gets to have an orgy with all your friends, which has been implied to be their main goal in several moments. Subverted in that if you're playing multiplayer, this ending screws up every other player's chances of getting with any of the core love interests.
  • Halloween Episode: Lampooned in the "That October Holiday" event. Everyone's already a monster at this school, so all the monsters dress up in each other's regular outfits.
  • Hand Wave: Played for laughs; almost everything that seems to be impossible happens with the bare minimum of explanation besides "it happens" and "works in mysterious ways."
  • Hello, [Insert Name Here]: When selecting playable characters, the players can choose from a character's given name (e.g., Amira), the color of their avatar (e.g., Red), or give the character a unique inserted name. Each player also chooses whether their character is referred to with male, female, or gender-neutral pronouns.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Quite a bit of the Creative choices will be based on this. For example, in the event where Damien wants to defeat the sun, convincing him to attack it at night so that it won't see it coming. Scott also tends to fall into this trope regularly, since he's profoundly stupid.
  • It's a Wonderful Failure: Downplayed, but by not inviting anyone to prom and not having sufficient stats, as well as failing to get any of the secret endings, the game gives you a "The Reason You Suck" Speech. The game also lets you know it thinks you are an idiot and a coward and gives you the rejection screen anyway. You also get the achievement for failing at playing dating sims.
  • It's Not Porn, It's Art: When Damien and Liam find The Player making erotic fanart of them together, The Player passes it off as art, which Liam ends up agreeing to, much to Damien's dismay.
  • Kafka Comedy: While it's hard to say your character is well-meaning, they also don't mean any harm. And if you make the wrong choices, you end up with the game being a darkly hilarious series of misfortunes for The Player as they fail to get a date.
  • Karma Houdini: Played for laughs. More often than not, none of the characters suffer any major consequences for their horrible and sometimes illegal actions (up to and including murder). While they do sometimes end up suffering jailtime if the player chooses wrong, they're usually out before the day ends.
  • Lemony Narrator: The narrator talks in second-person, though he voices The Player character's actions and lines. He also is quite snarky, stops to comment as if he is the player character, and so on.
  • Lemon Stu: In-universe, basically all male characters of the spicy fanfic "Dragon Heat," but especially the protagonist, Smitty.
  • Lighter and Softer: Second Term adds two new love interests who are both good-natured, friendly, and just want to live normal lives (by monster standards, anyway - also justified in that both of them were introduced in the vanilla game as creatures who until getting asked to prom existed outside normal "monsterhood"), and many of its DLC-specific routes have more of a sweet, slice-of-life-with-a-silly-twist feel to them than many of the wilder and Black Comedy-themed routes that came before them - for example, Zoe and Calculester have routes respectively revolving around her transition and acclimating to a "normal life" in which plenty of monsters still don't quite understand her but are (mostly) eager to try and his trying to ask the others about their life philosophies in order to understand the meaning of life. Of course, Tropes Are Not Bad - the base game's Black Comedy sensibilities are still there in plenty events with said base game's content still all there with Second Term switched on, the overall writing style and personality are still in-tact, and Zoe and Calculester have been well-received as full love interests for their endearingly dorky personalities.
  • Limited Wardrobe: Subverted. The dateable characters each have two casual outfits, a sports outfit, a prom outfit, and a school play costume. The Player characters have almost the same number of outfits, having only one casual outfit instead of two. Seasonal updates also added winter and summer outfits for the dateable characters, as well as costumes for Halloween (these are worn by everybody except the player characters) and Chinese New Year.
  • Literal Metaphor: In Zoe's arc during 2nd Term, convincing her former cultists that they should sacrifice their hateful prejudices results in them bringing out a box labled "Hateful Prejudices" that they destroy in Zoe's name.
  • Lovable Sex Maniac: Pretty much everyone welcomes having sex at any given time, though Polly and The Player are the most notable ones, with her being a hedonistic ghost and The Player always being mentioned by The Narrator as desperately wanting to have sex, and is attracted to pretty much everyone in the school
  • Love Overrides the Law: One of the secret endings has the player parody this trope. "You tell Miranda not to worry. You've seen plenty of teen rom-coms. You know how this part goes: You need a grand romantic gesture. Race to the airport to confess your feelings before Liam boards his plane!"
  • Lust Object: Pretty much every character to The Player, who is attracted to pretty much everybody in school, and is very clearly intended on having sex with any of the six main love interests.
  • Modular Epilogue: In Roadtrip, after the first two successful victories, the game unlocks the option to have additional ending scenes depending on whether the player meets specific criteria during a trip: one scene requires picking up a specific hitchhiker that's thematically appropriate for the destination, and one scene requires taking part in a specific event along the way.
  • Mood Whiplash:
  • Multiple Endings:
    • In Monster Prom and Monster Camp, the ending of the game will heavily depend on whether or not The Player was able to get a date to Prom/Shooting Star Celebration, and even then, the final scenario CG will depend on who you played and who you romanced. In Monster Prom, there are 22 secret endings unlockable through items bought in the shop or a string of events that can happen at any given time, sometimes at any route.
    • In Monster Roadtrip, there are six main endings, each of which is dependent on which of the six communal resources reaches the requirement first. Whoever gathered the most of the resource used gets an additional "MVP" image of their character during the ending. Additionally, the player can unlock a Modular Epilogue for each ending that requires a specific hitchhiker and/or a specific event to be encountered during the trip.
  • My Friends... and Zoidberg: In one event, when The Player encounters Vera, Liam, Damien, and Polly, the narrative refers to them as "the four most hateful people in school." Vera, Liam, and Damien make snide remarks, followed by Polly being her usual energetic self and proclaiming herself to be "super drunk." The narrative quickly corrects itself to "the three most hateful people in school, and Polly."
  • Non-Standard Game Over: If in a multiplayer game, one of The Players achieves THE SUPER SECRET ONE ending, this locks all other players out from their endings, be they just a date or be they secret endings, unless the ending involves not picking one of the main love interests. The other players get a warning stating that they missed out on the orgy.
    Narrator: Prom Night arrives, and you failed at getting a date because half the class is attending that orgy you're missing out.
  • No Stat Atrophy: Averted. Stats don't go down on their own, but if a player fails a stat check, several of their stats go down. Buying items in the Store will also decrease your Weath stat, and certain items decrease other stats once purchased.
  • Non-Heteronormative Society: The game takes place in a world inhabited by monsters of various kinds. It seems that every character in the story is bisexual to some degree, and it's always accepted by everyone else.
  • Odd Friendship: All the main Romance options hang out together and are willing to eat lunch with each other in any combination, despite their different interests and hobbies.
  • Omega Ending: Downplayed; while it's not required to get all other endings, THE SUPER SECRET ONE ending has quite a few requirements to allow The Player even to have a chance at participating in it. The Player must have taken all six main Love Interests to prom, get at least one of each of the six's secret endings, and have a certain amount of completed events. These will trigger a notification stating that The Player can now manage an orgy.
  • Pilgrimage: Parodied in Monster Roadtrip. Upon being tracked down by a small group of their followers, The Lamb annoyedly tells them that they're trying to go on a sacred pilgrimage called "vacation". It's very sacred and very important.
  • Poison Mushroom:
    • Getting the Lump Of Coal when you take The Gift That Keeps On Giving from the store drops all your stats down to zero.
    • Several of the drinks in the Free Drinks part of Monster Camp. For example, Bone Ache drains all your stats and Bloody Mary curses you so that you lose stat points for visiting locations instead of gaining them.
  • Promoted to Playable:
    • Zoe, Damien, Calculester, and Dahlia are all playable characters in Monster Prom: Reverse.
    • Zoe would get promoted even earlier, being made playable in both Camp and Roadtrip via DLC. Juan (the Small, Magical, Latino Cat) would also get a DLC promotion in Roadtrip.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: The player characters and love interests are all almost guaranteed to be mentioned committing horrible crimes from kidnapping and torture to mass murder over the course of a playthrough, with all of it Played for Laughs. The only time death is taken seriously is when it affects a romanceable character, e.x. Miranda's assassination or Polly's backstory.
  • Redundant Parody: Every once in a while, in a game with so many references (see below). For instance, one of the character creation questions in Second Term talks about getting out of being arrested by beating the officer at Yu-Gi-Oh. That exact thing happened in the very first episode of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds.
  • Reference Overdosed: This is a game that collects Shout Outs by the bucket, enough to warrant its page, and some are even fairly specific, including mentioning by name ship names of Star vs. the Forces of Evil and the ship wars and arguments that happen there now and then in that fandom.
  • Rousing Speech: One of the gym events includes you managing to take your team to victory by making one. Played for Laughs.
  • Running Gag:
    • "That's, like, third base for [Love Interest]!" in response to a love interest stepping out of line with a usual selfish behavior to show the player they're warming up to them, e.x. Vera sharing, Liam openly tolerating them.
    • Polly will frequently comment "that's how I died!" when something dangerous comes up. These are always contradicting, and couldn't have all taken place at the same time, making her an Unreliable Narrator. Subverted in her Halloween 2019 route, in that not only do we learn how she actually died, we do so in an entirely serious manner.
    • Damien sets things on fire for the sake of setting them on fire.
    • Liam ranking things he doesn't like in various categories, and where he ranks them, in relation to other things. This winds up subverted for a Wham Line in Hope's route in Second Term, in which point he ranks his two biggest regrets.
    • Zoe has written a fanfic for just about everything.
    • In Monster Roadtrip, you can solve conflicts with several characters by buying them a taxi license, from a bear with a gun to a zombie to a toddler. This leads to a trailer for a movie depicting the disastrous results, named Taxi Bear/Zombie/Bobby.
  • Sailor Earth: This game has inspired many monstersonas or "monsterpromsonas". Even the creators themselves have Author Avatar's in the form of monstersonas. They sometimes create monstersonas for those that win them as prizes, and for those that commission them.
  • School of No Studying: Lampshaded and parodied, should the player choose to go to Class.
    Sometimes, after all the monster nonsense and the dating gimmicks, you forget that attending class is supposed to be the primary activity at this high school.
  • Second-Person Narration: The Lemony Narrator refers to The Player as "you" during the whole game. Subverted in Second Term, where The Narrator turns out to be a student providing narration for everyone at school.
  • Self-Deprecation: Characters regularly complain about Kickstarter being for people who have no original ideas and no means of getting real investors for their projects, which the Narrator promptly points out is the only reason any of them exist.
  • Sex Comedy: The game is choke-full of innuendos and blatant references to both sex, as well as how constantly horny and somewhat desperate is The Player, being that the end goal is to take someone on a date and several secret endings end with The Player having sex with someone.
  • Ship Tease: Although the developers do not intend to disclose any "canon" pairings, the official Release Trailer for Monster Roadtrip hints at Oz/Zoe midway through, with Oz narrating how they picked up Zoe during their trip and stating "I think I like her" as Zoe gives a flirtatious look.
    • Several significant NPCs have romantic histories with one another, which makes sense given the hyper-horny context of Monster Prom's world. Damien can separately admit to having crushes on Hope and Miranda, and can end up on a three-way date with the latter and the Player Character in one route; might be Friends with Benefits with Polly given some of their more flirtatious dialogue; and he also once had a spontaneous three-way hook-up with Liam and the Slayer, although all three of them seem embarrassed to admit it. Joy has also dated Liam and Dmitri and Axarax and Gerard and Salomé in the past, and Liam initially had a thing for Dmitri when he made him into a vampire before their relationship shifted gears to something way more platonic. Dmitri can end up in an open relationship with the Interdimensional Prince in one route; Polly and Faith are revealed to be hooking up on a semi-regular basis; and while Zoe isn't necessarily dating anyone, she's open to Shipping her friends and classmates on the slightest pretext with all the merry abandon of the fanbase. To say nothing of the Golden Ending to the original game, of course, which sees Damien, Scott, Polly, Liam, Vera, Miranda, Blobert, and the Player Character attending an eight-person orgy.
  • Shout-Out: Here.
  • The Six Stats: Boldness, Fun, Smarts, Charm, Creativity, and Money.
  • Socialization Bonus:
    • In online games, achievements will count for every participant, not just the player who made the achievement.
    • Playing multiplayer also reduces the required stats to successfully ask any love interest to prom... but this trope can also be Inverted if multiple players are trying to date the same character.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance: So what song plays over the credits of the Halloween update ending where you help Scott and Polly inadvertently end the world? Scott and Polly sing an upbeat rap number.
  • Status Quo Is God:
    • Every run disregards the outcomes of previous runs, of course; but notably, even though some endings for Monster Prom establish a long-term relationship between a PC and one of the love interests, everyone is single again in Monster Camp.
    • Monster Camp also treats the player characters as sex-starved and kind of loserish compared to their potential love interests, even though succeeding at most routes in Monster Prom will give them some Character Development away from this. This makes sense with the new PCs added in later DLC, but not so much for the main returning four.
  • String Theory: The final event of the Shitter event chain has Damien, obsessed with finding out the origin for the eponymous statuette, cover his wall with pictures and newspaper articles connected this way. As Liam notes, that's how you know your obsession is becoming unhealthy.
  • Sudden Downer Ending: Played for Laughs in Roadtrip's "Lame Loser" endings. If your overal resource pool is too low at the end of a successful run, then your character ends up getting left behind by Polly and Scott during a pit stop back home due to a random fit of absurdly bad luck based on your character (Vicky ending up taking too long on the toilet, Oz becoming way too enamoured with a random street light, Zoe literally being sent to horny jail for making erotic fanfic that's too spicy even for the government, etc)
  • Take That!:
    • Various ones to people who use Kickstarter, with the characters occasionally proclaiming how they're ripping people off using a Bland-Name Product version of it. The Narrator will occasionally point out that without Kickstarter, none of the characters complaining about it would even exist.
    • Leonard is a shot at Fan Dumb. The character is written to be as obnoxious and hate-able as possible, and a stereotypical Straw Fan of things that just loves to complain.invoked
    • In 2nd Term, a lunchtime event with Zoe and Calculester has Cal complaining about the way Zoe is eating a human's sanity. Telling him that the human regularly posts opinions on Readdyt convinces him that eating the human's sanity is acceptable.
    • In one Monster Camp event, Damien calls the idea of eating at McDonald's only slightly better than the idea of being forced to eat Calculester's metal and plastic arm.
  • Take a Third Option: The player has to choose one of the six (Prom/Camp)/eight (Second Term) main love interests at the end of a run to confess to...or they could pick "none", which can either be an obvious bad ending in a regular run, or a special ending under specific circumstances.
    • Choosing to go to prom or the meteor shower alone will still result in a positive ending if you have very high stats, even if you haven't triggered a secret ending that requires you to go alone.
  • A Tankard of Moose Urine: Polly brews toilet wine on a regular basis. Vera is the only living thing who can drink it and survive, and even she thinks it's completely disgusting. Polly, of course, can drink it since she's already dead.
  • There Is Only One Bed: Should you choose to stay in the room with only one bed in the Cheap Motel, the narrator will immediately just call you a “horny fuck”. As if that wasn’t enough, Polly and Scott decide to exaggerate this trope by calling every single person they can to join them!
  • Threesome Subtext: During the Dragon Heat Events, you can take both Miranda and Damien on a date, if you have enough CHARM. It's obvious The Player character is interested in pretty much everyone in the school and would not turn down if more than one of their classmates is interested in them.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Arcane Book. Polly and Scott use it to play pranks on their fellow students, but somehow don't notice the creepy whispering and eerie side-effects from using the book...
  • Training Montage:
    • Parodied. One event includes The Player, Damien, and Scott training a wild beast to participate on a TV show over a training montage. When Scott wonders how they could do all of this, and it could still be lunchtime, Damien says that these montages work in strange ways.
    • Parodied again when the coach asks two other students to train with you. The narration will say that although 30 seconds passed, inspirational music was blasting out of nowhere, the day turned into night, and all of you are sweaty and tired.
  • Trade Snark: Right at the beginning, with Monster Prom's Stupidest Pop Quiz Ever™.
  • Unsound Effect: When Zoe's cultists sacrifice their hateful prejudices, it "produces a sound like a thousand grandmothers disapproving of your gender identity."
  • Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Most characters react to the monster slayer like it's anything they've seen normally. The same is applied to the Interdimensional Prince opening portals. Although they seem to react with surprise and glee when The Player shows up pretending to be a ghost, thinking they are an exchange student.
  • Vanilla Unit: Many shop items unlock secret endings, but there's also a series of basic ones that just give you a boost in one stat. Similarly, many of the drinks in the sequel Monster Camp have wacky effects, but there are still a few that just give you a simple stat boost.
  • Wham Line: During Hope's route in Second Term, Joy talks about a former Big Bad named Angelus who made a Heel–Face Turn later on. As it turned out, however, he hired an assassin to kill Faith before his turn, and it ended up taking the life of the second Hope instead. Then Liam (who's been mostly silent during the story) says this.
    I'll never be sorry enough, Hope. Hiring the Unfaithful is the thing I regret the most, closely followed by choosing Angelus as my evil name.
  • Who's on First?: One event has Vera drinking scotch for lunch, much to the confusion of Scott, who mishears it as "Scott's." It doesn't help when she describes it as "an energy drink for Scottish people."
  • World of Badass: It's a high school that features constant death, destruction, dark magic, and Black Comedy. However, it's all played for laughs.
  • Year X: As seen in one of the photos at the end of the game, it takes place in 20X0.
  • Yaoi: Deliberately invoked by Liam, who sees the genre as a form of art. He becomes obsessed with it soon after and The Player keeps pretending to be a master, which will lead them to the YAOI ending.
    Liam: I have heard about this... Yaoi. It's a millenary form of art from the East. A delightful celebration of love and desire.
  • You Lose at Zero Trust: In Monster Roadtrip, if any of your stats fall to zero or below, the road trip (and the game) comes to a premature end.

"What if I told you that the world was gonna end
And you had fifteen minutes
To spend with me or your friends?
Would you take the first bus over to my house?
Or would you take the last plane over the West Coast?"

Alternative Title(s): Monster Camp, Monster Roadtrip

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