There are currently five playable monsters in the Early Access build of You Are The Monster: The Amalgam, The Stalker, The Behemoth, The Siren, and the secret fifth monster, The Glitch. This guide covers the complete roster of all monsters You Are The Monster offers, detailing their unique abilities, core stats, and the exact methods required to unlock them from their containment cells.
Each monster offers a radically different playstyle, forcing you to reconsider your approach to navigating the Genesis Labs and confronting the Warden's security forces. Your choice of creature at the start of a run is permanent, so understanding their strengths and weaknesses is the first step toward a successful escape.
The Starter Monster: The Amalgam
The Amalgam is the monster you begin with, a resilient and adaptable mass of shifting biomass. It serves as the game's tutorial character, designed to teach core mechanics like consuming biomass to heal, spending Evolution Points (EP) on mid-run upgrades, and utilizing environmental hazards. While it lacks the specialized power of the other unlocks, its flexibility makes it a reliable choice for any run.
Core Abilities
- Pseudopod Lash (Active): A quick, mid-range tentacle whip that serves as its basic attack. Can be upgraded for range, speed, and a bleed effect.
- Digest Biomass (Passive): Automatically consumes the corpses of defeated enemies to regenerate a small amount of health. This is its primary source of sustain.
- Adaptive Form (Passive): Gains a small, permanent buff to either damage or resistance after defeating an elite enemy, allowing it to slowly specialize during a run.
Strengths and Weaknesses
The Amalgam's greatest strength is its lack of a glaring weakness. It has balanced health, damage, and mobility, making it a jack-of-all-trades. Its built-in healing from Digest Biomass makes it very forgiving for new players learning enemy attack patterns. However, it can feel underpowered in the later stages, like the Ash-Caked City, where specialized damage types from other monsters are more effective against heavily armored Wardens.
Unlocking the Main Roster
Beyond the starting Amalgam, three additional core monsters can be unlocked by achieving specific milestones during your runs. Once unlocked, they are permanently available to select at the start of any new escape attempt. Each requires a different playstyle to acquire, encouraging you to experiment with the game's systems.
The Stalker (Agility & Stealth)
The Stalker is a fast, fragile assassin that excels at hit-and-run tactics and avoiding direct confrontation. It's a high-skill-ceiling monster that rewards patience and careful positioning. Its playstyle revolves around using stealth to bypass non-essential encounters and isolate high-value targets for burst damage.
- How to Unlock: To unlock The Stalker, you must successfully complete the first biome, Genesis Labs, while keeping the facility's Alert Level below 50% for the entire run. This means avoiding security cameras, using silent takedowns, and destroying alarm panels before guards can activate them. You cannot unlock it by brute-forcing the level; stealth is mandatory.
YOU ARE THE MONSTER in-game screenshot
- Abilities & Playstyle: The Stalker's kit is built for surgical strikes. Its primary attack is a quick pounce, and it possesses a Shadow Meld ability that grants temporary invisibility, allowing it to disengage or set up ambushes. Its passive, Predator's Cunning, deals bonus damage when attacking enemies from behind or while they are unaware of its presence. Playing The Stalker means treating every encounter like a puzzle, deciding which enemies to eliminate and which to ghost past entirely.
The Behemoth (Brute Force & Defense)
Where the Stalker is a scalpel, the Behemoth is a sledgehammer. This colossal, heavily armored creature is slow but immensely powerful, capable of absorbing huge amounts of damage and dealing devastating area-of-effect attacks. It's the ideal choice for players who prefer to face their problems head-on.
- How to Unlock: The Behemoth is unlocked by proving your mastery of raw power. You must defeat the first major boss, Warden Unit 734, using only Heavy Attacks. This means no light attacks, no special abilities that deal damage, and no environmental damage. You must break its armor and deplete its health bar purely through charged-up heavy strikes, a feat that requires precise timing and a deep understanding of the boss's attack windows.
YOU ARE THE MONSTER in-game screenshot
- Abilities & Playstyle: The Behemoth moves slowly but hits with the force of a freight train. Its signature ability is Seismic Slam, a ground-pound that damages and stuns all nearby enemies. It also features a defensive stance called Carapace Armor, which drastically reduces incoming damage for a short period at the cost of even slower movement. Its gameplay is a rhythm of absorbing hits with its armor, then retaliating with wide, sweeping attacks that can clear entire rooms of lesser enemies.
The Siren (Ranged & Psychic)
The Siren is the game's glass cannon mage. It attacks from a distance with powerful psychic bolts and can manipulate enemies' minds, turning them against each other. It has the lowest health pool of any monster but compensates with the highest damage potential, provided you can maintain your distance.
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How to Unlock: Unlocking The Siren requires exploration and a keen eye. You must locate and destroy three hidden 'Whispering Idols' scattered throughout the second biome, the Ash-Caked City, all within a single run. These idols are off the main path and emit a faint, directional hum. Finding them requires you to explore every corner of the map, often breaking down suspicious walls or solving minor environmental puzzles.
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Abilities & Playstyle: The Siren's primary attack is a chargeable Psy-Lance that pierces through enemies. Its utility ability, Cognitive Scrambler, causes a single non-boss enemy to become hostile to all other security forces for a limited time, making it an excellent tool for sowing chaos. Its weakness is its fragility and the charge-up time on its strongest attacks, making it vulnerable to fast-moving enemies that can close the distance.
The Secret Monster: How to Unlock The Glitch
The fifth and final monster in the current build is The Glitch, a secret character whose existence is only hinted at through corrupted text logs. Unlocking it is a multi-step process that requires knowledge from several runs. It's a bizarre and powerful monster that can manipulate the game world itself.
Step 1: Find the Corrupted Data Fragment
First, you must find a rare item drop called the 'Corrupted Data Fragment'. This item has a small chance (around 5%) to drop from the final boss of the third biome, the Command Core. You must defeat the boss and successfully extract with the fragment in your inventory.
Step 2: Decipher the Code in the Maintenance Tunnels
With the fragment, start a new run. In the Genesis Labs, you must find a specific, unmarked maintenance tunnel. Inside, there is a computer terminal that is normally inactive. With the fragment, the terminal will display a scrolling wall of corrupted text. Hidden within the text is a sequence of four directional inputs (e.g., UP, DOWN, DOWN, RIGHT). This code is randomized for every player's save file. You need to write it down.
YOU ARE THE MONSTER in-game screenshot
Step 3: Activate the Hidden Terminal
Finally, you must reach the final room of the Ash-Caked City, just before the boss encounter. In the back of the room, behind some destructible cargo, is a hidden wall panel. Interacting with it reveals a keypad. Enter the four-directional code from the maintenance tunnel. If correct, the screen will flash green, and a message will read: "SPECIMEN_NULL UNLOCKED." The Glitch will now be available for all future runs.
- The Glitch's Unique Abilities: The Glitch is an expert-level monster. Its ability, Data Spike, can 'de-rez' weaker enemies, instantly killing them. Its ultimate power, Reality Tear, can teleport it short distances, passing through walls and even skipping entire rooms if used correctly. It is the most mobile and unpredictable monster, but also the most difficult to master.
Monster Comparison: Which One Should You Play?
Choosing the right monster for your playstyle is key. While The Amalgam is the best for learning the game, the others offer specialized kits that can feel much more powerful in the right hands. Here’s how they stack up.
YOU ARE THE MONSTER in-game screenshot
- For Beginners: Start and stick with The Amalgam. Its survivability is unmatched and provides the most room for error.
- For Aggressive Players: Pick The Behemoth. Its entire kit is designed to get in the middle of the fight and stay there.
- For Patient & Strategic Players: The Stalker or The Siren are your best bets. The Stalker rewards careful planning and execution, while The Siren requires constant repositioning and battlefield control.
- For Veteran Players: Once you've mastered the game's core loop, unlocking The Glitch offers a completely new and technically demanding way to break the game wide open.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will more monsters be added to You Are The Monster? Yes, the developers at Feral-State Interactive have confirmed on their roadmap that at least two new monsters are planned for the full 1.0 release, with more potential additions post-launch.
What is the best monster for a beginner? Unequivocally, The Amalgam. Its passive healing and balanced stats are designed to help new players understand the game's core mechanics without being overly punished for mistakes.
Can you change your monster during a run? No. Once you select a monster from the containment cell at the beginning of a run, you are locked in until you either escape or are terminated.
Is The Glitch worth the effort to unlock? Absolutely, but only for experienced players. Its high-risk, high-reward playstyle can lead to the fastest and most dominant runs in the game, but it is extremely unforgiving of mistakes. For players who love speedrunning or sequence-breaking, it's a must-have.
Final Take
The current roster of five monsters in You Are The Monster provides a fantastic amount of strategic diversity for an Early Access title. From the straightforward brawling of The Behemoth to the reality-bending chaos of The Glitch, each creature feels less like a simple character choice and more like a unique lens through which to play the game. Mastering all five is the first major challenge for any aspiring escapee.