Monstrous

About this game

Monstrous offers a fresh take on directional melee combat and what a game with a strong combat focus can do in greater context.

If you have enjoyed the fighting pace of Dark Souls, the dueling gameplay of Jedi Academy, the world building of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver & Vampire: the Masquerade Bloodlines or have fond memories of looting your friends' graves in Moonstone: A Hard Day's Knight we would like to invite you to join us on our journey to breathe new life into the "rivals on a quest" formula in a new, dark fantasy world undergoing industrial revolution.

SKILL BASED, ROBUST MELEE COMBAT

We are bringing competitive fighting game mechanics to the 3rd person action adventure genre. Dodge incoming attacks and aim your blows in skill based melee combat without target locks. Apply pressure to guard crush opponents, employ zoning tactics, block and counter attack enemies to turn the tables and punish turtling foes with grabs. We have built a solid backbone to make a respectable fighting experience accessible and playable in the 3rd person action format.

DIVERSE CAST OF PLAYABLE MONSTERS

Classic Gothic horror characters and villains are presented in a dark graphic novel art style. Player characters with signature fighting styles, powers & skills bring their own approaches and solutions to gameplay scenarios.

SESSION BASED, "ONE MORE GAME" FORMAT

Take on the dangers and secrets of the city in adaptable, short and long play sessions. You can also invite Steam friends to take over other monsters in play for a game night with your buddies, or join other players on the Steam network via quickplay if you prefer a multiplayer experience.

THE CITY IS YOUR PLAYGROUND

Prowl on rooftops to ambush foes, discover items and collect lore bits. Complete shared quests, defeat random encounters and compete for power as you get closer to the final showdown in the ancient heart of the city.

Latest news

• Patch Notes·16 Nov 2018Official

  Development Update

  After an entire summer in the oven, we're taking the development to the next stage. I'd like to thank everyone involved for their hard work and dedication in completing the update, developers and players alike. There is still a lot of work to be done but we're all committed to making this an exciting action game. The main goal of the current stage of development is to finalize all gameplay elements and the Rivals mode. To be able to achieve this in the next few months, we've limited the game area to the southern districts of the city, Harbor and Tenements. Afterwards, we will start implementing the Co-op and Duel modes before completing the rest of the city. Even though it may seem limited, it is still a rather large area full of objectives, enemies and all 5 progressive phases of Rivals Mode. Moving forward, we will increase the frequency of the updates to once every two weeks for the game, and once a week for the beta. Now that we have almost all of the systems in the game, our implementations will be short and bulk updates to fix existing problems and to increase performance and stability of the game as soon as possible. Last but not least, the issue of price. It was kingofcats who asked if there was going to be a sale anytime soon and we felt it necessary to answer this question properly. Pricing a game in Early Access is always very difficult. It has to have a balance between supporting the development, setting a worth to the final product and reflecting what is available currently. We've put a lot of thought into this, and decided to go into a 25% discount to reflect the fact that we've closed major parts of the city, and we still need to polish what is available in the store. I have to stress the fact that this is not the first in a long string of ever increasing discounts. The price will increase gradually to its former amount as we finalize the features of the game, and as we get closer to release, it will surpass the Early Access price. We're not taking th...
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• Patch Notes·16 Nov 2018Official

  Halloween Patch Notes

  Here is the full change list: • World Design Update: Lairford South o 6 more world squares have been added to the play area, completing the Tenements and Harbor districts. o Current game mode is set in a 500x200 playspace with explorable rooftops, landmarks and essential shops. o Numerous decoration bits and pieces have been deployed in available world squares to flesh out the town. o Most shaders and environment textures have been rebuilt or overhauled to add more detail to the world. o We have also built a relit version of the city that is more demanding in hardware performance terms. We will also make that version available on a beta branch while we work on optimization features. o More background music and ambient audio has been deployed in the city. • Player Character Updates o The Ghoul has been remodeled and retextured. o The 4 player characters (the Ghoul, The Vampiress, the Promethean and the Witch) had various animation updates and tweaks. They also include transitions for certain states. o More character abilities and mechanics have been implemented. o All player characters now have a sprint attack. o The Ghoul can now lay and detonate traps. Laying a trap can also be used as combo with melee attacks. He has access to a special, ricocheting shot and a super shot that penetrates. He also has more knife attacks with different properties to build combos with. o The Vampiress can now steal different buffs based on enemy strengths when she performs Essence Drain. Her Impaler is now a special attack. She can activate a short duration, powerful life drain buff as her new super. o The Promethean now has a very strong, special punch. He had most of his attacks tweaked to have wider attack arcs. He can buff his defenses with his power button. o The Witch can now receive randomized beneficial effects when she reveals a card with her power button and casts a set of randomized harmful effects on enemies around her when she reveals her hand in her super attack. She als...
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• Patch Notes·7 Oct 2018Official

  Upcoming Halloween Patch

  First of all, I would like to apologize for the lack of updates recently. We have been overhauling some systems in the game that required extensive rework of the existing art and additional content production. Instead of updating the game with background code and minor content updates, we decided to wait for the content production to catch up and release an update which gives a better idea about the direction the game is headed. The upcoming update will release on the 31st of October, in time for Halloween. It will include: • Updated look of the southern area of the city, covering both the Tenements and Harbor districts. • An overhaul of the core combat animations of existing player characters. • New weapon types for existing player characters • An updated starting area with the first version of tutorials and character customization • An overhaul of encounters and combat AI • New objectives and progression opportunities. • Last but not least, performance optimization for the updated areas of the game. As a quick preview, take a look at the comparison screenshots below. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32712265/5ef8fa1126dac2a634e2c2e7744429ae55e61867.jpg Old Tenements https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32712265/796acfb8ceb984d4c1b6f9b7cb9530792f8d29a7.jpg New Tenements https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32712265/9ac482a9678fd43bac2c462220f41bdfde5cfbf0.jpg Old Pillory https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32712265/f43171218b69c7e105494c387822064a0aefdaf6.jpg New Pillory I will also be sharing frequent status updates in the days leading up to the Halloween Update. Thanks again for your continued support 😊
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• Patch Notes·31 May 2018Official

  Patch 0.4.2.3 is Live

  This is our first monthly update to the game. Since it has been only a couple of weeks since the Early Access, the contents of the update are rather modest. It contains mostly fixes to combat mechanics, AI and sounds. Also a bit more polished Starting Area. Next update at the end of June will be more substantial in terms of Graphics, Animations and City Layout. We will also keep tweaking and improving the AI in general. If you do not wish to wait a month and want to see how the monthly update is progressing, please join us in the beta. It is updated at least every week, mostly once every few days as fixes and features are immediately tested on Steam. Here are the patch notes: • Killed off several bugs affecting combat mechanics. You can now land attacks better and your enemies will be stunned properly when performing combos. Guarding will also work more reliably now. • Following the combat fix, we have tweaked our AI so they don’t dawdle around too much. They might be a bit relentless now, but we will keep tweaking until they feel right. • The Collection system is live! The first batch of collectibles are lore bits that can be found in various locations in the city. • Players can gain coins by killing enemies now • Starting Area has been populated. It has an acceptable performance right now. We will improve performance in the next couple of weeks • Fixed an issue that prevented the player from returning to the lobby after completing a game session. • Weapon trails are now dynamically adjusted to match the frame rate. Trails will better match the attack arcs and look smoother to boot. • The camera will now properly shake when you land a killing blow on an enemy. • The NPC AI now handles movement better. Next week the animations will be updated to match their movements. • Small update to move lists to include default sprint and interact buttons. • Various UI fixes in character selection, highlights and the game menu. • Starting Area fires don’t clip anymore. o https:/...
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• Announcements·18 May 2018Official

  Finally, out in Early Access!

  This is an exciting first announcement for us. After months of sleepless nights, we’re finally able to push the game to Early Access and I can share our plans for the game and our reasons for why we’re in Early Access. Monstrous originally started out as a 2D game. It was heavily influenced by Moonstone: A Hard Day’s Knight, which we hold dear to our hearts. We didn’t want to make just a copy though, we tried to imagine how a game like Moonstone could be realized in a time where melee combat has taken to new heights by excellent games such as Souls series, Bloodborne and Dragon’s Dogma (a personal favorite for me). Moonstone was also a free-roaming game, so we made a board-game like setup but dropped the turn-based approach to modernize it even further. After a few early prototypes, it became clear that the concept was more suited to 3D so we switched to Unity Engine around late 2017. The prototypes immediately improved and after an initial phase of technology pre-production, we started production in January. We all knew that making a free-roaming action game in 3D would be a tremendous undertaking and we needed help developing it as we didn’t have the resources to hire user-testing groups. We had two options at that point, either crowd-fund the game to increase our resources or release the game in Early access and get help from the player-base that would be interested in being involved in a development cycle. None of us felt comfortable with the idea of crowd-funding. We wanted to have an open structure where players would take part in the development, not just fund the project and hope that it will one day release to their expectations. While it is true that we could have setup the tools to involve the players ourselves, it meant additional time and resources spent on setting up and maintaining such a structure. Steam already offered such tools, Valve were and still are actively spending tremendous resources on demolishing the wall between developers and players. ...
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