When you boot up an old game, you expect certain things to stay the same. Maybe you expect to be fighting monsters and exploring landscapes you used to know. Maybe the same old puzzles. What you might not expect is that the NPCs and beasts got a little bit sick of waiting for you to come back and started setting up a life of their own, building a small town for themselves as they eke out an existence in their digital world.
It’s probably even less expected that they’re happy to have you hang out and create your own fun with them in Village Monsters, a life sim set in a long-abandoned video game.
Home customization. Days wiled away cooking, fishing, and critter collecting. Helping build a village with new structures. Village Monsters offers all the relaxing entertainment of a life sim, but does so in a world filled with spooky, menacing monsters that all have their own business to take care of. Why not take a moment and get to know a demonic tree? The giant snow beast that lives down the road? Or enjoy toasted marshmallows on the beach with the devil? It’s this silly, monstrous slant that gives the game its charming personality.
Players will also have seasonal holidays to look forward to as the weather changes. Don’t let those distract you too much from a mystery that’s affecting this world, though, as glitches start to claw at the edges of the world, and rumors of disappearing territories abound. There is a greater narrative at work in Village Monsters, hidden in item descriptions and through whispered conversations. Players looking for an overarching story will find it in here, as well.
Isn’t it about time you tried seeing what all those old video game enemies were up to, anyway? I mean, you may have scrapped as kids, but surely you can get along now.
An alpha demo for Village Monsters is currently available on Itch.io. For more information on the game and developer Warp Dogs, you can head to the game’s site or follow them on YouTube and Twitter. You can also donate to the game’s development on Kickstarter.
