I'm not a Monster

I'm not a Monster has one foot on the screen of your desktop PC, and another on your dining room table. While it has tile-covered environments and a turn-based setup that evokes the general spirit of something like Xcom 2, it actually has a lot more in common with social deduction games like Werewolf. Like the popular party games that have players trying to work out who's the traitor in their midst, I'm not a Monster has players working as a team to find out who is an alien imposter in disguise and who is most definitely a friend.

The thing that pulled us to I'm not a Monster is the art style. We're total suckers for that retro sci-fi aesthetic, and this game is dripping with tongue-in-cheek reverence to the science-fiction of yesteryear. Everything, from the grainy visual filter that overlays the graphics through to the narrator's best attempts to evoke the era through a stylised warble, has been done to bring about a very specific feel, and it really does a great job of setting the mood. In particular, the environments are rich with the detail, the characters deliciously generic, and the main menu is seriously classy.

Having been drawn in by the art style and apparent Xcom mechanics, we were surprised to find out that I'm not a Monster is actually very different to what we expected. At first, pleasantly so. As alluded to earlier, it's very much a social deduction game, and the mechanics have been tweaked to facilitate this kind of communal gameplay. Simply put, all players plot out their actions during the same fixed period of time, and then all turns play out simultaneously in the next phase. Rinse and repeat.

There are fewer aliens than there are humans, but thanks to their ability to morph into human form and blend in, they can be hard to spot. Everyone is looking out for the subtle tells that differentiate a friend from a foe. There's a lot of guesswork going on, and this is the kind of experience that will benefit from friends playing it repeatedly, exploring the metagame together as it evolves across multiple plays. The issue, then, comes from finding enough people to play with.

A good social deduction game will set you back £20, perhaps double that if it's a big board game with a deduction element (like the excellent tabletop adaptation of Battlestar Galactica - those pesky Cyclons are always hard to spot). I'm not a Monster will set you back just over £10, but every new player will have to own a copy, driving up the cost considerably if you've got a large group - and you're going to need a group to play this one. Why? Because it's simply not much fun to play when you're on your own.

For starters, the lack of an adequate tutorial makes the game borderline unplayable at first, and unless you're prepared to search out the additional instructions needed to play the game properly, you're going to be at a huge disadvantage to other players. It's simply not good enough to be thrown into a game without a basic understanding of the key features, but that's what happens here. It's especially frustrating because there are actually some really interesting ideas here, such as items that can be combined to offer additional abilities. After our own search for clarity on a few important aspects, we noted existing players were being diverted to the forums for more fulsome explanations of the fundamentals.

Then comes its other major failing: the chat. Social deduction games are built on the subtle communication that goes on between players, and you need to be able to read body language just as much as you have to try and untangle the words that they say. That's simply not possible via voice comms, at least not to anywhere near the same extent, and the fact that (in our experience) the vast majority of vocal players are speaking in Russian makes this side of the game almost impenetrable. You can communicate with other players using pre-written lines of text, but there's no room for subtlety or nuance.

That said, with a full complement of friends, you could well have a smashing time with this game, especially if someone has taken the time to really dig into the mechanics and communicates the more subtle rules to the rest of the group. While there are a lot of things that aren't explained, the basics are quite straightforward. Human players must rescue NPCs, and all the while the aliens are trying to stop them, snatching up the NPCs and turning them into potential future aliens, preferably out of sight of the well-armed player-characters. If an alien gets spotted and then killed, an NPC that has already been turned becomes a player-controlled alien, and so the cycle continues until one team one team prevails.

Social deduction games can be hugely entertaining, and the mechanics built into this one will almost certainly facilitate a fun party game experience given the right conditions. Playing with friends is the absolute minimum, but no doubt it'd be even better if you could all gather around the same table with your laptops or meet for a LAN party. That said, if you're after a great social deduction game and you're willing to travel, we'd probably recommend shutting down your computer and busting out a copy of One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Shadows Over Camelot, Battlestar Galactica, or any of the other great tabletop games that do the same kind of thing.

We really applaud what developer Cheerdealers has tried to do here, and if the stars align and you can play it with a large group of friends, the framework that has been built is enough to facilitate some fun times. That said, despite loving the style and appreciating the effort, we can't recommend I'm not a Monster to the solo player - everything spins into a negative spiral early on, mostly due to inadequate tutorials but also due to the communication barriers between players. There are some good ideas at work here, but probably not quite enough to rescue this brave attempt to do something a little different in the video game space.

Having said all that, I'm not a Monster could potentially be brilliant as a PlayLink game on PS4, and we'd happily take another punt on it if it ever makes it onto Sony's console in that form. Social deduction games are great because the experiences they offer are built on top of the rules, evolving over time to have a life of their own, with each player contributing to an ever-shifting meta that's very much tied to the people who are playing. As it stands there are a few too many things holding this game back, many of them beyond the ability of a programmer to fix. However, if this were a one-time purchase that brought people together in the same space to share the same screen, allowing for an experience that transcends the limitations of its fundamental mechanics, we think there's potential for it to succeed.