Here Come The Monsters!

The Game of Gargantuans
Modern (giant monsters)
Deep7
1999
Complexity: 2

Here Come The Monsters! is another 1PG game from Deep7, like Shriek!—of which I have a generally positive opinion—and Exosuit A-OK—of which I have a generally negative opinion. It’s also a game about giant monsters, which just happen to be my favorite kind of monsters, so reasonably this should also be a thing that I like.


Character Creation: 2/5
Players begin by rolling on a table to determine their monster’s type, and then on another to determine the number and types of ‘factors,’ things like extra limbs, armor, and special attacks. Next they roll 1d3 each to determine their monster’s Hugeness and Craftiness, and 1d6 to determine the number of points to be allocated to skills. The only skills are ‘Whup-Ass,’ ‘Dodge,’ and three listings of ‘Special Attack,’ and considering that you can reduce skills down to -2 for extra points, and special attacks are assigned randomly, you could hypothetically get 6 extra skill points if you had no special attacks. I mean, the rules never say that you can’t do that. Probably because they weren’t written for this game. After that you roll a few more secondary attributes, but by that point you’re probably already as done with this game as I am.
So overall, this isn’t very good, they took the character creation system from Shriek!, cut out all but two attributes and three skills, and add a random creature type—which has literally no effect—and some randomized abilities that are at best poorly-defined, and at worst not defined at all.

Mechanics: 1.5/5
So obviously, the only thing that matters here is the fighting, so here’s how that works. Both monsters roll against one of the skills—Whup-Ass, Dodge, or Special Attack—and the player who rolled the most under their skill+attribute total is successful—there’s no indication of what to do in the event of a tie, I recommend settling it with arm wrestling. However, since attacks can be resolved attack-versus-attack or attack-versus-dodge, the only reason to ever use the Dodge skill is if you have a higher Craftiness attribute and no special attacks. There’s also a list of various attacks that can be made, but the only difference between them in the amount of damage they deal, so there’s really no reason to ever attempt anything other than the most powerful attack. Basically it comes down to trying to have a combat focused game, but without actually writing and new combat rules.

Writing: 1/3 [−]
So admittedly I do have something of a double standard when it comes to writing. Specifically, the shorter a game is, the fewer errors I’m willing to tolerate; and coming in at basically two pages, this game is riddled with an unacceptable number of errors.
So basically, it’s just incredibly obvious that the copied the Shriek! rules, then did the absolute bare minimum to convert them to a new game. The problem being that they seem to have forgotten the part where you then read the document to make sure it makes sense before you publish it. This results is small things, like using inconsistent terminology and extremely-poorly-worded explanations, but also bigger issues like having a hit location table that serves literally no function, special attacks with no listed damage, and mentioning the military may attack monsters but never actually how that works.
Overall it’s just lazy, it’s incredibly obvious that they did not care about what they were doing and just wanted to shove out another game as quickly as possible.

Presentation: 2/5
It’s the basic 1PG layout, enough text and tables to fill up a page, with some clip art if there’s any room left. Honestly the only thing I really like about this game is a collection of clip art creatures battling against a clip art skyline, much like the cover it looks bad, but funny bad.

Final Remarks
I really wanted to like this game, but in short it down to “hey, can we make a giant monster game without actually writing any new rules?…. Nope. Oh well, let’s publish it anyway.” And you could say I’m expecting too much from this, but no, I’m not. Given how little there is to this game, everything should be of at least an acceptable quality, and it’s not, but more importantly, it’s not due to poor design choices, or lack of ability, but complete lack of caring. If this were my first exposure to Deep7—which it probably was for a lot of people since it was free—it would give me nothing to suggest that any of their other products would be any better. Honestly I wish I gave points for effort so I could give this game a lower score.

Base Points: 5.5
Character Creation: 2/5, Mechanics: 1.5/5, Presentation: 2/5
Adjustments: −1
Setting: N/A, Writing: −1, Content: N/A

Overall Score: 30% (4.5/15 Points)