Monstrum 2 is a survival horror game for 2-5 players. Some play as prisoners, working together and solving puzzles to escape the facility, while another player plays a monster whose only task is to catch and kill all the prisoners.
Feel free to check the video to see some gameplay, some bugs, and a nice cosplay.
Storyline
Prisoners are trapped in the fortress and their only means of escape are either the boat or the helicopter. But before you can get there, you need to power up the powerplant. However, there’s no way to get inside until you open the doors by activating 5 levers. There are three stages to the game where you only have your wits, teamwork, stealth, and understanding of the monsters you are facing to help you. Can you survive?
Gameplay
Playing as the prisoners, you’ll have to collect items and use them to solve puzzles, helping your teammates, confusing the monster, and progressing through the game. The monster also has a bunch of tools to help them track and kill prisoners (for example, a monster can look through a prisoner’s eye or “see” their scent). The goal of the prisoners is to escape and the goal of the monster is to stop them.
Pros
1. The game is fun, especially with friends. It gets a bit boring and repetitive after a while because there is a very limited variety of monsters to choose from and puzzles to solve at the moment, but the title is still in early access so it will get better. Probably. Hopefully.
2. Monsters rely on absolutely different abilities from one another which makes it interesting to master them and learn to use their skills to their full potential. Still, the choice of monsters is very narrow, there are literally only three options at the moment, so it doesn’t take a lot of time to explore what they have to offer.
3. The game is spooky. It’s not the same sense of terror that the first game provided, but it’s still pretty nice to get scared by friends and to try to sneak around them. Especially if the monster-friend has fully embraced their monster-personality.
Cons
1. The game is very unbalanced in private lobbies. If you don’t have a full lobby, then it’s basically impossible for the prisoners to win the game. The game doesn’t introduce any balance features like giving prisoners more lives if there are fewer of them than intended. So eventually, you’ll have to come up with your own rules to balance the game out. And playing with randoms…honestly, it’s not even remotely as fun as playing with friends.
2. The map is very confusing. At least at first, there’s no way to figure out what you have to do and where to go after finishing each stage of the game. It would be nice if there would be more guidance to the game like little hints that the players could switch off if they don’t need them anymore.
3. BUGS! OMG, there are tons of bugs – sections of map glitching, the animation of the doors opening not triggering, prisoners T-posing, etc. Well, this game is still in early access (although some games can sit in early access for 7 years like 7 Days to Die), so there’s hope that these bugs are going to get fixed. But at the moment, it’s pretty annoying.
4. The game seems to be highly repetitive due to the limited variety of monsters and puzzles that can be generated around the facility. That’s why many people get bored of the game pretty quickly playing with randoms. Playing with friends adds some kind of drive and challenge to the game, so it makes it instantly much more fun compared to the random lobbies.
5. The visuals aren’t nice. There’s definitely something wrong going on with the prisoner’s legs, the tilting animation for the prisoners looks bad, the dying could be better, and the map is dark, repetitive, and not very intriguing. There’s not much to add here. I expected much more, honestly.
Rating
It’s obvious that the game isn’t finished and needs to be polished a lot. The feelings about Monstrum 2 in general are not the same as the original game. I think that the title raised huge expectations and that’s why people feel let down by the actual product. Hopefully, it will get better. As for now, I rate it 6.52 prisoners/10.