Monster Girl Island
Monster Girl Island is a 3D adventure game with some adult-only elements set on a secret island filled with unusual female inhabitants. There's elves, androids and other non-humans on the island and more and more of them show up out of no-where as the games "story" proceeds. It is created by indie-developer Redamz who funds the game through Patreon. The game is only available for Windows. It runs fine under Wine using either Wine's built-in DX translation or the VXDK Vulkan translation layer. It has good graphics but the characters are shallow and not that interesting and the actual gameplay is far from exciting.
This game is for adults (18+) only. This game starts out as some innocent island exploration game and that is exactly what it is most of the time. However, there is some nudity and other imagery not suitable for children and feminists in this game. It is not for children.
The "prologue" version is free as in zero price. It is NOT free software. The yet-to-be released full version will cost money.
Installation and Configuration[edit]
Monster Girl Island is a unfinished indie-game still in development late 2019. A free sort-of preview version of the game, fully playable, was released as "Play Monster Girl Island: Prologue" in June 2019. That "Prologue" version of the game can be downloaded from itch and it is also available in the Steam store - but the Steam version won't work on GNU/Linux distributions. It's steam store page will only show "You must login to see this content." if you visit it from a web browser. Installing the game from Steam on GNU/Linux results in a empty game folder.
Downloading the game from Itch gives you a 1.8 GB 7zip file named MGI Prologue v3.7z. You will need the p7zip package which provides the 7z binary to extract it with 7z x MGI Prologue v3.7z. The extracted folder needs to be in the Wine folder (defaults to $HOME/.wine) to run it on GNU/Linux. It works fine with Wine 4.21 with both Wine's OpenGL DirectX translation layer and the optional DXVK vulkan translation layer.
Monster Island running under Wine with DXVK.
GNU/Linux users should NOT install the game using the Steam store. Steam will by default not let you install this game on GNU/Linux. However, you can go to Steam's settings and choose Steam Play at the bottom and check the checkbox Enable Steam Play for all other titles. Steam will then try to install any and all Windows games and run them with it's Proton setting when this setting is enabled. Some unsupported Windows titles will run just fine, other's won't. Monster Girl Island Prologue is one of the games which simply won't start. Why? Because Steam will, apparently, just download the compatibility packages and omit the actual game and claim it's installed. It will create a empty folder called .local/share/Steam/steamapps/common/MGI\ Prologue/ and call it a day. It's laughable. Downloading and installing it from it's Itch page is a working alternative.
Monster Girl Island will by default load the GPU at 100% and run at a very low frame-rate even at low resolutions. There are some in-game settings which can be changed to make it run a lot better.
Turning things off makes it run a lot smoother.
GNU/Linux users will probably want to turn off "Bloom", "Extra Bloom", Temporal AA, HBAO, HDR and Grass too in the in-game settings. The frame-rate won't be 60 fps even with the reduced settings (even if GPU load is below 100%) but the game will run a lot better. We tested the game on a AMD RX 570 GPU, perhaps it runs smooth with all settings enabled if you have a more high-end GPU.
Graphics, story and gameplay[edit]
You find yourself on an island and you meet some "monster" girls. They are not very monster-like, they are just not human.
The "monster" girls are a bit rude but they are mostly friendly. They will talk to you and ask you questions. The dialogue is not that interesting. It does attempt to tell a story. It's not hugely exciting and compelling.
The "monster" girls in "Monster Girl Island" will talk to you and ask you questions about you and your interests.
The girls in this game, like most women in real life, have their issues. Faranne will give you the first problem you will have to solve in this game.
Poor Franne has lost her crabs.
She has lost the crabs she was supposed to serve as dinner. You will, of course, have to find them for her. Locating said crabs is a matter of running around the town village looking for them. Your character will "run" whne you hold ⇧ Shift. It won't run very fast. Running is very slow and running makes you move at the pace so slow it's like walking and your character moves so slow it feels like crawling when you are supposedly walking.
Luckily, you can get help locating the missing crabs. The game character Ophelia, who is an Android, can make a mobile "app" for you called "Crabdar 9000". You will have to find her to enlist her help.
The Crabdar 9000 will tell you where the crabs are.
Running around looking for them crabs is tiresome and not at all interesting. You can easily find them once you have the Crabdar 9000 installed on your in-game phone. It's not at all challenging, just something you have to do to move on. It is somewhat annoying that the phone is dead-centered on the screen while it's active, having it in one of the lower corners would make a lot more sense.
The Crabdar 9000 will lead you strait to the missing crabs.
Faranne becomes very happy when you return the crabs she lost after wasting ages running around collecting them for her. Now she's able to make dinner for you and the other girls.
Girls have to eat.
Faranne will, unlike women in the real world, offer to somehow "thank you" for your hard work.
Your options for receiving "thanks" from Franne.
You can propose that Franne "thanks you" by letting you touch her breasts. She will, again unlike real women, agree to this of you choose to go that route. She will, naturally, not be too comfortable with you touching them in public right then and there. She will therefore invite you back to her place later that evening.
Time moves forward, night comes and the game gives you the options of a) Going to Ara's house for a nice "chat" (you can pet her if you want to), b) going to sleep and c) going to Faranne for a "thank you". You can only choose of these options.
This is where it comes very apparent that "Moster Girl Island" is not just another regular island exploration game. There is some adult content in this game which is not at all suitable for children.
Franne will let you fiddle with her boobs if you choose to go to her house.
Faranne will keep her promise and let you touch her breasts if you choose to go to her house. Then she'll get upset and decide to punish you. She will ask you how to do that. The best option is to let her do that by sitting on your head. That's very tiresome so she'll fall asleep afterwards. Your game character will take that as a great opportunity to squeeze his shaft in between her breasts. He'll do that until the volcano erupts.
What we've described in detail so far is the entire first chapter of Play Monster Girl Island: Prologue". The next chapter is very similar.
Renge needs your help.
The second chapter starts with a new girl named Renge appearing out of no-where. She has got a problem for you to solve: Her sister is "missing". You will, of course, have to help her find her sister. Doing so requires you to find and collect wooden logs for Ophelia the Android. There is no Crabdar 9000 to guide you, you have to run around and find and collect them logs all on your own.
There is a lot of running around collecting things in this game. That's essentially all you do beyond reading dialog boxes where the characters either tell you what you need to do or blabble on about things that are not at all interesting. The monster girls you "help" throughout the game will "thank you" for it in ways that are not suitable for all audiences. These scenes appears to be the game's strong-point and they may be very appealing to those who like the games particular flavor of erotic entertainment.
Verdict and Conclusion[edit]
The story, as far as there is one, is not that compelling. You find yourself on an island with monster girls and that's about it. The graphics is good and the characters are well-made in that regard. Their personalities are, on the other hand, not deep or interesting. The gameplay is mostly running around looking for things to collect. It's not that interesting. It almost feels like it's just a part of the game to fill it with something so all the adult interactions can be excused. And there's a lot of it. That's what the game boils down to: Some new girls needs help, you help her by collecting things and the monster girl shows you her appreciation for helping her.
This game's actual gameplay is simply not very exciting. "Dull" is a fitting way to describe the gameplay with one word. It seems like the game is mostly about the adult-only scenes, everything else is dull and not very noteworthy.
Monster Girl Island may be compelling if you really like anime-type erotic scenes and erotic games in general. There's not much else to celebrate in this game. It's just a drag if you don't find those adults elements to be particularly interesting. On the flip-side: Those who really do enjoy that kind of thing may find this game to be very appealing and highly enjoyable.
Links[edit]
The released Prologue version is free as in free price (not free software) so you can try if you want to. It can be downloaded from the game's Itch page. Windows users can install it through Steam (broken on GNU/Linux).
The games "website" monstergirlisland.com is just a re-direct to the developers Patreon page.
Enable comment auto-refresher