Devs Share Insights on Monster High: Skultimate Secrets’ Reception

As far as licensed games go, Monster High: Skultimate Secrets is a new contender with a lot of promise. Based on the third generation of Mattel’s Monster High franchise, the new platformer aims to give an underserved audience a game to really challenge them while appealing to those who grew up with earlier iterations of Monster High. Game Rant caught up with narrative designer Destinee Cleveland and associate producer Miguel Ortiz de Urbina Díaz after the game’s October launch. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Giving Young Girls Challenging Games

Teen and pre-teen girls are a massively overlooked demographic in game development and have been for a long, long time. Games like DC Super Hero Girls: Teen Power are a rarity, with many games for the demographic not seeking to challenge young gamer girls. That’s a niche that Monster High: Skultimate Secrets is proud to be able to fill.

Q: First off, can you introduce yourselves?

Cleveland: Sure, my name is Destinee Cleveland. I was the narrative designer and writer for the game. I run a nonprofit called Dames for Games, which focuses on uplifting voices in the gaming industry and community for women and fem-identifying individuals as well as minorities. I’m also on the board of Black Voices In Gaming, which kind of does something similar. I’m on the advisory committee for Make-A-Wish International, so I do a lot of nonprofit work along with writing. I used to write my own webcomic called Pudding and Flan. I’ve done some contract writing for a couple of other games that I can’t talk about right now, but yeah, I do a little of this and that. I’ve worked on the development side as well as the publishing side in the indie scene, so that’s a bit about me.

Díaz: I’m Miguel Ortiz de Urbina Díaz. I’m an associate producer working at Outright Games on the publishing and production side of things, so I’ve been working and leading the day-to-day production efforts for Monster High: Skulltimate Secrets. Other titles that I’ve been working on that have already been released for Outright Games are the green educational adventures, PJ Masks Power Heroes: Mighty Alliance, and most recently, Matchbox Driving Adventures. And that would be it for me.

Q: Why was it important to your team to make a game for girls in this age range?

Cleveland: I grew up being a gamer. My first game system was the Atari 2600? I can’t remember, but I’ve always played games. A lot of my friends have always played games, and I think, as we were growing up, there was this idea that games were kind of for boys and not so much for girls. 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 move towards the future. That includes girls, that includes all genders who want to see themselves represented in games.

Díaz: Yeah, I would like to add that more than 50% of players across all platforms are girls or identify as women. This is obviously a huge target audience for us and other games. Since we specialize in a younger target audience, we also value being diverse in our target audiences.

Q: How does Skultimate Secrets reach out to the pre-teen girl audience?

Díaz: Basically, the game is based on Generation Three of Monster High, which was introduced recently in 2022, so this gives it a refreshed look that’s more aligned with the pre-teen target audience that you mentioned. Like the game, Monster High as a whole has a secondary target of older fans. I have grown up with the brand. But obviously, since we wanted to also go for that younger target audience, the pre-teens that you mentioned, it was ideal that we had this newest generation, the G3, to base the game upon.

Cleveland: Just to kind of go off of that, if you’ve followed the series and the IP when they first came out, Generation One was very adult, like even like the characters, their proportions and things like that. Generation Three has looked at who they want to cater to and realized that young girls are different, right? So you have characters like Twyla, you have characters like Frankie, and they all bring out a specific kind of personality, things that they’re interested in. When we were doing the game, at least when I was doing the narrative design, I tried really hard to make sure that those personalities shined throughout the story.

You have Cleo, who’s very kind of haughty and a little snobbish, kind of full of herself, right? You have Frankie, who is just like your friend next door; she’s like, so, so happy. Not the girl next door because she’s gender fluid, but just the way she presents herself is really, really cool. Then you have Draculaura, who’s this girl who just wants to study and be the best that she could possibly be. There’s all these different personalities. I think what we tried to do was make sure that all of them were able to really shine throughout the entire gameplay, so that when young girls do play these games, they can connect with these characters. And I think that’s what’s really important: Generation Three has really tried to make sure that representation is present in everything that they do, including this game.

Q: When we were younger, the majority of games made with girls in mind tended to be dress-up titles. I’m wondering why, despite the industry maturing, this demographic is still a gap in the market. Do you have any insight on that?

Cleveland: Oh, yeah. I think the reason why there’s still a gap is there are still certain people running things. I do believe that things are changing, but it’s baby steps when it comes to things like that. For example, Dames for Games is the first showcase to really uplift women and share their stories, and that happened last year. And it’s kind of sad because we shouldn’t need that to happen. It shouldn’t be an exception. It should be the norm that we’re doing that, but we still, as an industry, have a long way to go.

I do believe that Skultimate Secrets is going in the right direction, which is why it was such an honor to be able to work on the project. But yeah, I totally know where you’re coming from, which is why I’m always promoting that you should be seen, heard, and respected in this industry because it’s truly important, and we’re trying to build a foundation where the younger generation can look and say, “Oh, wow, they did that, or she did that, or he did that, and I can see myself doing those same things. I can be a narrative designer, or I could be a 3D modeler, or I could work in publishing.” And these are just the steps that we’re taking to solidify that and make sure that when they see the numbers behind these games, and they see the interest in it.

Díaz: I would like to add that you mentioned that before, maybe if you wanted to play games as a girl, you only had like this Barbie dress-up options–this has been a trend that has been evolving over the last, I would say, like five to ten years, where we come from a really rigid mindset of ‘the cool and challenging stuff is for boys, and the more calm narrative and no challenge, no stress-inducing stuff is for girls.’

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. 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. So this is also really important to point out.

Q: You mentioned that this is like baby steps toward a more inclusive industry. What makes Monster High a very good IP for making this step forward?

Cleveland: Let’s take it back to how Mattel has continuously grown to try to be as inclusive, as popular as possible. Even if you go back and you watch some of the Mattel stories–and this is a little off track–but how they were the first to introduce a black Barbie doll, how they were the first to actually introduce Barbies that had careers. A lot of people don’t know that they released a career Barbie doll that was a game designer! I think what they’re trying to do is they came from a very traditional kind of background, and they’ve seen that that’s not working anymore. Girls want to be whatever they want to be, and it’s not even just girls and boys. Now you have genderfluid, right, where people just want to be people, and they just want to be able to do what they want to do.

I love this game because one of the really cool things about it is that the base character is not female or male, it’s just a base, and you can create whatever you want to create with this base. And I think that’s really, really telling with where they want to go with this, with how inclusive they really want to be. And honestly, I haven’t seen that kind of forethought put in a lot of games that are aimed toward pre-teens in general. So that’s why I think Skultimate Secrets is making the right steps, whether they be small steps or large steps. I do think that they’re looking at the bigger picture with this. And I think this is the first step of many to create that inclusiveness, to bring forth that representation and that diversity, which is so important in our society.

Building Monster High

Working with Mattel, the team at Outright Games worked to bring an amazing level of authenticity to Monster High: Skultimate Secrets. Mattel has a wide appeal both as a toy manufacturer and as a partner with game studios, so building out a detailed recreation for players to platform around with the company was an experience developers enjoyed.

Q: So you touched on this a bit, but could you go a little more into working with Mattel? And what working with this IP was like?

Díaz: The more day-to-day contact with Mattel was handled from the OG production side of things. I think, as a whole, we are extremely happy to be granted the opportunity to work with Mattel, with these amazing IPs, not only Monster High–our contacts have always been really understanding of production timeline limitations and everything. They have been really helpful in all kinds of processes. It’s been really cool, and we really look forward to working with them again in future projects.

Cleveland: It was a really cool experience working with Mattel. Growing up playing with Barbies, it’s kind of like a dream come true to be able to work on one of their IPs. Honestly, I think they gave a lot of really good feedback because there were some things that I wouldn’t have known unless they gave me a little bit of feedback. 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 you play the game, it’s still the same Twyla, it’s still the same Draculaura. Yeah, I’m really glad that they were able to help with some of that and the finer details.

Díaz: I would say that they were demanding, but that really paid off in the end because it made for a really authentic Monster High experience. We are really happy with the collaboration.

Q: How does the platformer gameplay mesh with the world of Monster High ?

Díaz: Yeah, of course. The world of Monster High is really well known for having secrets, for having hidden areas to discover, so we really played into this both having the entire school to explore. You have small platforming challenges scattered throughout the school. You can visit all three floors of the school. You can visit plenty of different classrooms. You can also visit the gardens, even the catacombs. You will find scattered around smaller platforming challenges, and that will grant you different kinds of rewards like Monster Coins to spend on clothes or even Fearbook Pages with info on different Monster High characters. You get that gameplay loop throughout the world, but also in hidden rooms behind secret doors.

These hidden rooms are the larger, more platform-focused levels, and are also scattered throughout the school. Part of the main quest–don’t want to get too into it, lots of spoilers–but you are tasked with finding these hidden rooms that are scattered throughout the school. You will need to explore the entire Monster High School, find those rooms, and complete those more challenging platforming levels to gain new skills and also advance through the main quest. It’s really integral to the school and to the aspect of finding what’s hidden.

Cleveland: I was just going to say the entire story is basically about saving the school, so that’s what’s really, really cool about it.

Q: You mentioned the story is about saving the school. Can you give us a little bit about the narrative?

Cleveland: I’m trying not to spoil anything for people who haven’t played it, but the school itself is a mystery, right? We don’t know if the school is alive or if it’s not alive, and what we do know from the stories is that it’s protected by this power. There’s basically this barrier within this game. You get to find out exactly what the barrier is, why the school was placed where it was placed, and how that barrier protects and reacts after a certain amount of time.

When your character comes in, they are a key factor in saving the school, and I’m not going to give any more than that. You definitely have to play the game to find out why you’re a key factor, but coming up with the story was really cool. I love the idea that there is a toy line out where it’s Skultimate Secrets, and you can go and you can unlock and find different compartments and stuff. And I love how this plays into it. I think a lot of people who love Monster High will really, really enjoy the story, and I think they’ll enjoy the little Easter eggs and the callbacks to the actual toy line.

People Want More Skultimate Secrets

One thing that players and developers agree: there needs to be more Monster High games like Skultimate Secrets. The major criticism the game faces is that players want more, which the devs at Outright Games have said is a good problem to have, especially so soon after launching.

Q: What’s reception to the game been like so far?

Díaz: We released on the 29th of October. We keep in contact between departments, so I actually keep in pretty close contact with the customer support department. Overall, the reception has been positive, both from more of a broad kind of preteen gamer girl target audience but also has been positive from a “Monster High is fun” kind of player. So overall, it has been fairly positive. Most of the really positive points are the world: you can explore everything. Also, the platforming, people are really happy that it is not just a walking simulator with like dressing elements, that it has more to it than that, and that it can actually be challenging at times. It’s also really cool that we nailed the authenticity of the brand, and also that the story is engaging and really interesting. These are the main aspects.

One of the main complaints is that the game could–people want it to be longer. The game takes almost 10 hours to 100%, which for a pre-teen game is actually pretty good, so the big complaint is also a very good sign. The reception has been good.

Cleveland: I don’t have any contact with those departments, so most of my feedback is just from friends and family who have played the game. When I announced that the game is out and I was the writer behind it, different people on Twitter, BlueSky, and LinkedIn congratulated me and told me their kids had played it, and they’ve really enjoyed it. I enjoyed it myself. I sent it to one of my best friends. He’s an adult doll collector, and he’s loved everything about it. I think the most magical thing for me was hearing the lines that I read by the voice actors. It just was perfect, chef’s kiss.

Díaz: Highlights from the game, at least from my point of view, is the loads of puns everywhere on the narrative side of things.

Cleveland: It was fun to write, and it’s fun to see everybody really appreciate it. Just like Miguel said, the only thing that I’ve heard is “It’s too short,” which is always a really good complaint because that means you wanted more of it, right?

Q: Speaking of more, do you have any future plans for Skultimate Secrets ?

Díaz: We only talk about titles that are officially confirmed, but we would be extremely happy to work with Mattel on developing more of the Monster High universe. And we’ll obviously be open to that since this has been a really, really good and really interesting development.

Cleveland: Yeah, absolutely, I would love to write more for Monster High! It’s been such an amazing experience coming from playing with Barbie dolls to actually writing a game for Barbie dolls, and Mattel has been kind of a dream come true, one that I didn’t even realize that I really wanted. After being offered the position and working with Miguel and Rudy [Lamy, Senior Producer at Outright Games] and all these great people, it’s just been such a really dope experience. Hopefully, if it does come about that they make another game, I will be asked to come back to write some more puns for the game.

Q: Is there anything else either of you would like to add?

Cleveland: Go check out the game. If you haven’t checked out the game yet, I promise you, you will enjoy it. It’s really, really cool. It’s not just for girls. Anybody can enjoy it. There’s a little bit of everything in it for everybody.

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