Village Monsters is a quaint simulation video game that allows you to live a peaceful life in a village full of friendly monsters. Developed by Josh Bossie—who is tirelessly adding new things to improve it—Village Monsters features the story of a nameless human who happens to be the last of humanity after the war between monsters and humans. When you awaken, you discover a little monster village but instead of being hostile to you, they welcome you, and you start a new life exploring their mysterious world and helping them out.

Home is where the heart is

There are tons of relaxing village life simulation video games out there that will always be considered a home for the weary hearts of its fans. There’s the popular Harvest Moon games that mixed farm life and romance for several titles, and then there are the friendship-centric Animal Crossing games that depended on your day-to-day activities and doing odd jobs for NPCs. 

Village life sims appeal to those who want simpler times—away from all the hustle and bustle of the real world and other types of games. This is what Village Monsters aims to be, but it takes a leaf out of Undertale’s book and lets you befriend cute monsters while you’re at it. 

Welcome to our village

In Village Monsters, you are introduced to an adorable pixel-art world that’s a bit reminiscent of Stardew Valley. The colors aren’t too vibrant and everything is a mixture of peace and mystery that beckons you to explore as much as you can. Your character starts out living in a rented room on the second floor of a tavern and you can only do odd jobs here and there for the residents for now. There are activities like fishing, critter-collecting, treasure-hunting, and even mushroom-gardening. 

They’re all for the nice dream of eventually saving enough money to buy your own home. However, the main focus of Village Monsters is the large cast of monster characters you can make friends with and the intriguing lore behind the strange glitchy-looking objects seen around the map. Unfortunately, because of this, early gameplay will consist mostly of long dialogues with the NPCs and not much diverse action going on once you’ve scoured the large map.

Monsters are friends

Village Monsters still hasn’t reached its full potential with the developer currently working on more features. However, this does not mean that the game can’t be enjoyable. There are cool little features to it—like the ability to walk away from dialogue boxes and let them fade instead of exiting out of them—but there are also some features that need revamping—like the time still moving while you talk to people. All in all, though, Village Monsters is a title worth trying out.