There are few things more cathartic in this life than a videogame that just lets you smash a load of stuff up. In that regard, You Are the Monster is about as pure as it gets: pick a giant monster, get dropped into a city, and rampage across it.
It’s a profoundly uncomplicated experience. Starting my first round as Kraken (sort of a cross between a lobster, an octopus, and a minivan), at first I think I must have missed a tutorial explaining the controls. No need for one, as it turns out—simply walking into things smashes them aside, whether they’re cars, scenery, or civilians, such that I’d be hard pressed to do anything without causing some kind of havoc.
Civilians are understandably terrified at my approach, but at the same time are wonderfully terrible at getting out of the way. Everywhere I go, I find heaving crowds and traffic jams ready to maximise my trail of destruction. Perhaps they’ve all turned up to rubberneck.
The more stuff I destroy, the more I level up, which unlocks—what else?—more ways of destroying stuff. Each monster boasts three special attacks, which can then be further upgraded. At first, these abilities (which include things like a ground slam that smashes everything around me and a sprinting charge that knocks aside all intervening obstacles) feel like overkill. But when the city starts fighting back, they prove surprisingly vital.
One thing that giant monsters apparently have in common with GTA protagonists is a wanted level. The more stuff I destroy, the bigger the response from the authorities gets, starting with police and SWAT teams and escalating until I’m fending off tanks, drones, snipers, and airstrikes.
Big as I may be, I’m not invincible, and it’s here that a bit of strategy does cut through the mindless smashing. Picking off dangerous opponents fast is key, but it’s almost impossible to do so without taking any damage at all—I’m simply too large a target. So the other important thing is healing regularly, which you can only do by gathering health orbs, a rare drop from slain civilians.
In practice, it comes down to picking and choosing the right times to use my special attacks and managing their fairly long cooldowns. Getting caught out without one available can be deadly.
Of course they’re useful for taking out dense groups of enemies, but often it makes sense to save some for quickly smashing through a crowd to recover when my health starts to dip. The Kraken’s ability to suck people right into its maw like a big evil vacuum proves particularly clutch for that.
With the right mix of aggression and caution, I manage to survive for a full 13 minutes of rampaging, completing the round. Turns out, my reward for that is to get a nuclear bomb dropped on my head—a unique way of both ending the level, and providing a bit of karmic balance for all that murdering I’ve been doing. Clearly there’s no question I’m the bad guy in this scenario.
All in all, You Are the Monster is a pretty slight experience—beating a run with a monster unlocks an endless mode for it, and hitting destruction milestones unlocks new monsters, but fundamentally the simple core formula doesn’t change much. Between the licensed assets and fairly barebones offering it’s easy to tell this is a scrappy one-man project.
But good kaiju games are thin on the ground, and I appreciate the sheer directness of You Are the Monster. Even that title tells you exactly what you’re getting in for, and there’s something to be said for jumping right into the simple joy of causing chaos with no frills or fuss.
And like an irradiated dinosaur, it may have a lot more growing to do from here. The plan is for the game to launch into early access on June 18, and receive about six months of polishing, quality of life improvements, and new features based on community feedback. My first suggestion? Let’s get some bigger monsters in there—stepping on cars and tanks is fun, but stomping buildings would be even better.
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