Monster Seeking Monster is a friend group party game released by Jackbox Games in party pack four, played on browser.
Monster Seeking Monster (MSM) sounds drastically different from an improv story game, but a couple of things led me to pick this game. My group had discussed the idea of setting our game in a speed dating scenario, and MSM seemed like it had the silly kind of setting that we were going for. I definitely liked that the ridiculousness of essentially being in a monster dating app made my friends and I text each other the strangest things – like finding out one player is a werewolf and asking them if they’re down for a doggy pile (if you know what I mean). Being within the magic circle of this game means we have been pulled out of whatever room we played in and transported to the haunted house as monsters. We hope to cultivate a game that does the same and allows the players to feel comfortable stepping out of their real life and into the shoes of a childless soccer mom, or that guy who just got back from studying abroad in Amsterdam. The game should really encourage silliness and ridiculousness as much as possible, which I think MSM embodies well (at least the way my friend group played it).
My group is trying to create a sort of group game that caters towards college-aged young adult group hangouts, but is still playable in family groups. We want to create a chill game for a smaller number of players that can be played repeatedly with little overlap. I think all Jackbox packs are designed for a similar audience, and most are also playable for family gatherings – I would not consider MSM one of the family friendly Jackbox games. I think one of the main ways that MSM and my team’s game will differ is in how communication works. MSM limits communication to just four texts over the course of each night to make each message feel valuable, while I think we will try to encourage as much verbal content as possible to continue the story and flesh it out. Unlike MSM, our game lacks a clear outcome and objective. We have short term goals, similar to attempting to match with the same person to get a date for the night, but there is not a clear “this is how someone wins at the end,” such as the hearts in MSM. The hilarity and craziness in MSM is more of a side effect of the rules and how to get to the objective, where our game has made them the main goal, which in turn means we need a different final outcome. This lack of a specified direction has hindered our players ability to understand the rules, and buy into the magic circle of our game.
MSM and my team’s game don’t actually share a lot of mechanics and therefore have very different dynamics as well. Our mechanics produce a much less structured set of dynamics, where players are encouraged to talk to as many people as they have time for or are willing to talk to them, where MSM limits the amount of player interaction and just how much you can say to each other in each interaction. However, I think both games have a similar aesthetic of a wacky social situation with some sort of theme that guides how players interact with one another, as well as who is attracted to the game.
