Politics isn’t something I’ve actively tried to merge with how I talk about games that I review. It brings the discussions to places that I find undesirable. So imagine my surprise when a game came to my table that was quite literally about politics. To be specific, the UK kind of politics where your actual goal is to convince the Members of Parliament (MPs) to vote your way. And while single-player rougelike deckbuilder is a set of words you commonly find within the indie game space. But this one presents itself as a political game with a bit of a twist. But this world of politics is that of monsters, not humans! Though some may argue that they don’t see the difference. But that’s beside the point. Monsters have a different way of handling politics. They don’t stand on the merits of their arguments. They attack their opponent’s character. They make use of advanced strategies like jeering, insulting, bribery, cheating, and sometimes even resort to more direct physical means. Which I’m sure is a new concept to many out there.
So if you’d like to know more about Prime Monster, how it portrays the legislative process, and how it feels closer to a turn-based wrestling match than any practice of democracy I’ve ever seen before, buckle up! Parliament is now in session!
Production
This title has gone with rather simplified backgrounds and very expressive sprites for its characters. Which is a wise choice, considering how you’ll basically be talking to other people all the time. They also took it upon themselves to add as much character as they could and play up the stereotypical personalities you may find speaking on a podium. So much so that most of these designs are something I would more than likely associate with things like political cartoons.
Animations are rather limited, but they serve their purposes well. However, it might have been nice to have some sort of fast-forward button. Repeated play sessions make each little cutscene or extended attack animation feel drawn out, and simply going through the motions.
On the audio side of things. Music was good enough to fit the moment I was in. But I only really recall the one during actual combat. The lack of voiced lines does hurt the experience a bit, as I believe the satire coming out of the writing would have been served well by voices emphasizing the sharp wit that Prime Monster constantly has. There are more or less screams and grunts instead. Perhaps as a measure to keep the language barrier from becoming too big a problem.
Mechanics
Prime Monster makes use of popular tropes that indie games are known for: deckbuilders and roguelikes. So, how does it make a unique spin on it? Well, they vote on it.
Instead of running each other’s HP bar to zero as quickly as possible. Each round is, instead, played out on a fixed number of turns. They make use of this time to maximize the number of votes they can win out of the MPs present in the session. Because what truly matters in the end is that you get at least one vote more than your opposition, and that makes it a win.
How exactly is this done? The most conventional method is to make use of your words to convince the representatives listening to you! Either charge your base to side with you, or to attack your opponent. If you take down their unity gauge, that means they start to look bad towards their own constituents. It can go so bad to the point that even your political opponents start voting for you! There are actually other ways of making use of each other’s MPs that can set new rules on the podium. Making it easier or harder for you to win, depending on how the field was set up. I’ll get back to detailing this a bit more later.
Apart from winning the vote, there are a few other things you’ll want to keep track of. First, there’s the money that allows you to buy upgrades, consumables, and even offers you a way out of bad situations. Then there’s your authority. It’s about how much your party likes you, where they will attempt to throw you out if you run out of it. It’s possible to regain some between rounds, so taking some damage to it isn’t a big deal. Then there’s political capital, which serves as your skill points that you can use in a fight. But it actually has uses beyond that, making certain choices possible when asked about controversial issues. You’ll want to have as much of this available as possible because certain choices can get you something as big as huge money bonuses and even cabinet members who hand you some very powerful upgrades. And finally, there’s polling, meaning how much the public is willing to vote for you in elections. This only comes into play during the actual election period. But that needle of favorability will always be affected by your performance and choices on key issues.
All those 4 things I brought up actually persist through your game. So it becomes pretty smart to save your political capital at the end of every round, and gambling your polling to secure some huge short-term gains is a feasible strategy as well. It can feel overwhelming at first, and admittedly, I was annoyed by it. But once I got the hang of things, I was able to progress through each game smoothly.
Content
What you can play with revolves around choosing one of three playable characters, each dictating the fundamental play style and tactics you can employ. Thinking of them like starter Pokémon gives you a good sense of their role, as they evolve and grow in power as you gain ‘legacy’ (note: Legacy is basically your level in the Prime Monster) throughout your time with the game. One of them is more like a regenerator-tank archetype. Where you can set up your MPs to constantly cheer for you every turn, guaranteeing some amount of support is generated every turn. While the other is an all-or-nothing attacker. Basically, the exact opposite of the green Ork, where generating unity is quite difficult, so you may be better off turning your MPs into bats that attack at every start of the turn and not have their vote against you counted. And the third blue one, well, I’m not really sure, as I was never really able to grasp what their strategy was about. It was definitely about building up an army of voters, but figuring out the flow of her kit was something I couldn’t achieve.
Beyond your own politician, you’ll face a whole assortment of other, unique entities in each legislative session. These opponents aren’t generic; each has in-theme powers that directly reflect their persona. Slimes can split up and multiply their MPs, werewolves go feral and actually kill MPs if left alone, and others can charm or even make various buff and debuff effects across both your and their MPs.
Complementing the colorful cast is the game’s distinctive writing. It’s pretty funny and distinctly British, filled with a lot of self-contained humor that makes each session engaging. Savvy players will notice that some figures can be easily seen as having certain contemporaries as their inspiration. However, the game maintains a maturity in its satire, ensuring it never takes the political references too far. Rather than calling out politicians by name, they simply take on their habits or tactics and turn that into an image of a monster that can exaggerate that behavior.
The variety in characters and their abilities introduces a high degree of build and matchup variety. You will inevitably encounter enemies that are simply a bad matchup for your current build, potentially leading to a frustrating experience. Fortunately, the game provides a mitigating factor, allowing you to switch out who you’ll deal with for certain sessions. On the other hand, a notable constraint in Prime Monster is the lack of any mechanism to “tutor” your build. If I said that I maybe wanted an all-bat build for the Vampire, I don’t actually have a reliable way to do that. By the same measure, I can’t chase after unknown or experimental builds since I have no way of controlling what I get every time I level up or get an upgrade.
However, I think bad matchups would have been mitigated by having ways to deal with the annoyances that each AI opponent has for you. Manipulating your card draw with useless cards is basically anti-fun. It slows your deck and can effectively stun your ability to do anything. If there were maybe ways to respond, prevent, or counter this kind of attack, maybe I wouldn’t hate fighting these opponents so much.
In fact, the AI opponents aren’t really playing by the same rules you are, as they simply choose an action from a preset sequence. It might have been more interesting to see that they may have been playing the same way, where you would be able to mess with their hand as much as they do to you. Or at the very least, have a way to play as these other colorful characters. I was very interested in maybe playing as the goblins, too!
Features
Prime Monster actually takes at least an hour to finish, especially if you’re spending much of your time reading the various texts in the game. Thankfully, the game does have an auto-save feature that lets you take the game on at a comfortable pace. Apart from that, you can review previous runs, which lets you review the score and the build you managed to make from that run.
This title also features certain challenges where you can be restricted in things you can normally do. Like you can be prevented from gaining more MPs or Cabinet members more than once every election, have your money burned by a certain amount per round, and more. However, I didn’t see any real benefit from trying them out since they don’t really unlock better buffs or prizes that persist after a run. So I left these challenges alone.
Conclusion
Prime Monster turns out to have a much deeper learning curve than I expected. So when I finally got around to learning the ropes, I started enjoying the game a bit more. Save for those enemies that prevent you from drawing your own cards, which I completely hated.
Eventually, this game became the sort I would pull out while I let YouTube play on the side. Meaning I found it mentally engaging enough to play, but not to the point that I can’t enjoy my usual YouTube channels as I wind down from a busy day.
The game isn’t really much more beyond that, as it lacks meta progression between runs, but offers some surprises if you’re willing to play certain characters over and over, where my choice was the vampire. Sitting right now at around 10 USD, it’s about at the level of a standard indie game you find on Steam. And I would recommend it to those who just want a low-stakes card game that’s a little funny, interesting, and engaging.
Prime Monster has been voted to score a 3.5 out of 5.
Available on PC, check them out on Steam.