There aren’t a lot of actually challenging games made for younger girls, but that’s something Outright Games and Mattel change with the new Monster High: Skultimate Secrets. The platformer is accessible to players of any gender or age but fills an important and underexplored gap in the gaming market by not just giving pre-teen girls a game suited to their interests but one that will actually challenge them.
Outright’s narrative designer Destinee Cleveland and associate producer Miguel Ortiz de Urbina Díaz shared their insights on this target audience and how Monster High serves them in a recent interview with Game Rant. These traits make it a winning choice for a pre-teen gamer girl’s favorite holiday gift.
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The Skultimate Secrets to Reaching Girl Gamers
Monster High: Skultimate Secrets is based on the recent third generation of Monster High, which has reach for both pre-teen girls and those, like Díaz, who grew up with Mattel’s popular IP. Released in 2022, Generation Three has refined its appeal for that pre-teen girl audience, as well as made intentional efforts to present a uniform Monster High experience from films to games.
Outright’s game goes a long way toward both being a consistent part of Generation Three but also expanding players’ understanding of the titular Monster High school itself. Cleveland, who worked closely with Mattel on the game’s characters and narrative, gave some insight into bringing the school to life:
There was only so much information online and so much that you can glean from the series, especially because they’ve had three generations so far. But getting to see how they want to go with it really helped me to develop the characters so that they were seamless with the series and things like that. Watch the series and play the game, it’s still the same Twyla, it’s still the same Draculaura…This is kind of open world where you can go in explore and see all the things that you can’t see in the show or you can’t see in other games.
She also hinted that some of the mysteries at the heart of Monster High may have answers in the game, but said that players would have to pick the title up for themselves to find out what those answers are. And that attention to detail wasn’t the only thing Mattel helped bring to the game to connect with the target audiences of pre-teen girls and the secondary audience of long-time Monster High fans. Mattel, the pair explained, makes good representation a top priority. Since introducing career Barbies–including both a game designer and Tomb Raider Barbie–Mattel has put the diverse experiences of girls as a front-and-center part of their franchises. Frankie from Monster High’s current generation identifies as genderfluid and the player character in Skultimate Secrets has no gender defined for them, for instance.
Girl Gamers Want a Challenge
Many games developed for girls, and even ones targeted at adult women, have a tendency to be focused on low-stakes experiences. The quintessential girl games are walking simulators or dress-up titles. While these, and cozy games in general, have an important place in the industry, gendering them as feminine does a disservice to gamers at large, who have complex interests. That includes gamer girls.
Díaz mentioned that over the past few years, the trend toward giving girls more simplistic games has started to turn around, and part of that is Monster High: Skultimate Secrets. And it isn’t just an instinct about gender equality that Outright is pursuing, but cold statistics as well, he explained.
We have actual data from our playtests with this game and other titles from the catalog that show us really clearly how girls want that challenge as much as boys, so this is one of the reasons why
Monster High: Skulltimate Secrets
is not just a dress-up game. Obviously, there’s a part of customization that plays into the diversity and inclusion and being yourself, which is integral to Monster High, but also it’s first and foremost a platforming game. We have some fairly challenging platforming sections aimed at a younger target audience; we really wanted to make sure that the game wasn’t just extremely easy. If you wanted to find a challenge within the game, you could.
Anecdotally, Cleveland shared experiences from her own life that supported those statistics and offered some insight into why the market Monster High targets are so underserved. It should go without saying that gamer girls exist, but according to Díaz, women make up over half of the market. Despite this, attitudes about women gamers aren’t always supportive.
Cleveland started a group called Dames for Games, which had their inaugural event last year to try to uplift women’s voices in the industry to counter the conception that gaming remains a masculine space. Mattel also wants to challenge that idea, so working with them to create a game that was very welcoming to young girls was something she jumped at.
I’m always promoting that
you should be seen, heard, and respected
in this industry because it’s truly important…I think, as we were growing up, there was this idea that games were kind of for boys and not so much for girls, but just statistically looking at it, girls are just as involved in playing games, wanting to be streamers, wanting to become developers, wanting to do all sorts of things that involve the gaming community. I think the reason why this was important is because we’re growing as an industry and we want to make sure that everyone is included as we’re moving towards the future, and that includes girls, that includes all genders, who want to see themselves represented in games.
And the reception to the game has been extremely positive. The main complaint Cleveland and Díaz have heard is that the 10-hour game could have been longer, which both characterized as a good problem to have. That kind of positive review so soon after the game’s late October release bodes well for a possible sequel in the future, which both were interested in potentially working on.
From those promising reviews to being a game reaching out to an underserved market, Monster High: Skultimate Secrets is a shoo-in for the gaming pre-teen girl’s favorite gift this holiday.
- Released
- October 29, 2024
- Developer(s)
- Petoons Studio , Casual Brothers Limited
- Publisher(s)
- Outright Games
- ESRB
- Everyone