Creature Collectors - Pokémon... Pokémon with guns... Pokémon with roguelike elements... Pokémon with deckbuilding... Pokémon with

[Anonitolia]

Despite the subtitle, this thread isn't for Pokémon, Digimon, SMT/Persona, or Palworld discussion. All these games have their own threads to be discussed in. Instead, this thread is for the smaller indie games that Steam dubs to be part of the "Creature Collector" genre.



What is a "Creature Collector" game?
In simple terms, it's any game with a heavy emphasis on/core gameplay loop revolving around befriending (taming/capturing/raising/etc) some kind of magical creature. There is often a great emphasis on collection, although most smaller examples are more focused on combat.

This genre used to be a nonentity until around 2020, 2021ish when a bunch of smaller indies started popping up on Kickstarter claiming to be part of it. A notable example from just before that era would be the infamous TemTem, literally marketing itself as "the Pokémon MMO you've always wanted", with other vague success stories after it including Cassette Beasts, Palworld, and Monster Sanctuary.

Now, the definition of this genre is actually very vague. Despite the criteria i've laid out at the top of this paragraph, nobody seems to really know what counts. If you go to the genre tag on Steam right now, for instance, you'll see the more reasonable examples like Digimon World: Next Order and Monster Hunter Stories 2 sitting next to... endless "Hidden Object" games, some Lo-Fi study tool with creatures kind of in there somewhere, and Rune Factory of all things.

So what is this, then? Does any game with any creature-raising aspect fall into the "Creature Collector" tag?

Nobody knows! That's the beauty of burgeoning genres. Everything is uncertain, 99% of examples are derivative crap, and nobody takes any of them seriously until one standout example of originality defines the genre for years to come.

Creature Collectors have yet to find their standout example, despite many many attempts and the genre's relative age (it can be argued to have existed since the publishing of the first SMT game... in 1992), so as of now they exist as a loose collective of Pokémon-likes tied together mostly by the Steam tag and whatever Gym Leader Ed decides to feature on his channel that day.

Why are you making an entire thread on these?
Mostly as containment for my own sperging. I've been fascinated with this genre for a while now and don't want to keep barging into other threads to lament the massive amounts of wasted potential in this concept.

However, I also find the new "crossover era" of these games-- where the most "successful" games from the original wave of indies create rogue-like spin-offs of their main game that involve the creatures of other Creature Collector games crossing over with theirs-- to be pretty entertaining in a circlejerky kind of way and wanted to share this odd development with the rest of the farms. I don't think i've ever seen this kind of stuff in the indie sphere before, and it's especially odd that it's happening in such a tiny genre that's predicated around immersion in its own "unique" universe of monsters.

The main examples of this crossover era, at the moment, are the upcoming Abomi Nation: Monster Rifts and TemTem: Swarm.

Feel free to post about any upcoming "Creature Collector" here, or any drama regarding their devs. There's already been plenty, what with Necromancer's Gift taking the money and running or TemTem and Palworld's numerous controversies, and given how most of these devs and their players come from the incredibly toxic Pokémon fandom... I'm sure it'll be a whale of a time.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

All the Brazilian attempts:

 

[Toilet Grenade]

Pocket Mortys is a guilty pleasure of mine.

 

[Salty Squid]

Gave Cassette Beasts a try when there was a free trial on the Switch a while ago and while it isn't too bad from a gameplay perspective, the whole fagginess of it drove me away. It's like if Pokemon Black and White got raped by Life is Strange and this was the resulting child. 4/10, might buy it as a time killer if it goes on a 90% discount one day.

 

[Duiker]

I remember the gimmic of Monster rancher that could use any cd to generate a monster and I like those kind if gimics. I wish there were other games that had some means to semi randomly generate a monster from everyday things or items.

 

[Anonitolia]

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince just released, first entry from that series in a while. I've never played it myself, mostly because I strongly dislike almost all of Dragon Quest's designs, but it looks neat and certainly fun for people with more fondness for DQ's art style. Reviews are saying it's good, but there're a few negative ones warning against the PC port specifically so it might be a better idea to buy it on consoles or try to pirate somehow.

 

[Celebrate Nite]

I don't know why it took me so fucking long to realize that once upon a time I had already played a REALLY GOOD creature capture game that wasn't Pokemon. I know the series started on the regular DS, but this was my first time experiencing it, and i fucking loved it from start to finish.

Basically you dig up fossils with your car that you can upgrade over time to have better tools to dig up dinosaur bones easier. There's multiple different areas where you can dig up all different kinds of bones, and some specific bones are in specific areas for a dinosaur that was found in another area. Every dinosaur has 4 parts to them (head, body, arms, legs), but you only need to find one to revive them. The downside is that some of their attacks suck with just 1 bone, which is why you need to find all 4. You can also find gold bones that give the dinosaurs different attacks that may or may not be better or worse than what their default attacks are. The dinosaur varieties are plentiful, and you can have multiple ones and even do the whole 2v2 / 3v3 battles.

the only downside that i had with this game was that by the time i got to the online battle part, THE ROOMS WERE EMPTY (as in nobody was online to play) , as if like nobody gave a shit about the game (or maybe they aced the servers, idk.... didn't get that generic error code though). if there wasany game that needs either a new entry in the series or to be revived on the Switch, THIS is it.

 

[Anonitolia]

REALLY GOOD creature capture game that wasn't Pokemon.

>posts Frontier
I agree wholeheartedly with your post, but you could not have used a worse image. Frontier is barely Fossil Fighters. It's made by different devs with a different main gameplay loop and a much worse story. I cherish the original two games (Fossil Fighters and Fossil Fighters: Champions) like nothing else, but man do I hope any revivals stay as far away from Frontier as possible. Unless they miraculously find a way to make its better concepts work while reverting the redesigns. Which I highly doubt will happen.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I like this genre in theory, but aside from a couple big ones like Digimon and Monster Rancher there's been nothing very good. I still find them interesting to try though, like Robopon.

Medabots is/was probably too big to count, but I liked that show a little bit, although the games weren't great. Lots of potential there.

 

[Level99Manchild]

Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince just released, first entry from that series in a while. I've never played it myself, mostly because I strongly dislike almost all of Dragon Quest's designs, but it looks neat and certainly fun for people with more fondness for DQ's art style. Reviews are saying it's good, but there're a few negative ones warning against the PC port specifically so it might be a better idea to buy it on consoles or try to pirate somehow.

The game is also censored on consoles, and DQ's translations have been pretty questionable lately.

I remember the gimmic of Monster rancher that could use any cd to generate a monster and I like those kind if gimics. I wish there were other games that had some means to semi randomly generate a monster from everyday things or items.

There's Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher that came out 2 years ago. You don't get to use CDs, but instead phrases and words to generate Kaiju from the Ultraman series (The Asian version uses CD names, but it's very, very limited). Tecmo-Koei rereleased Monster Rancher 1 and 2, but I heard the Steam port is pretty bad. My only gripe with the game is the combining system kind of sucks.

 

[Anonitolia]

the new "crossover era"

The bizarre trend continues, with Moonstone Island and Coromon, of all games, crossing over.

Even more strangely, this crossover is actually one of TWO Moonstone Island is doing. It leaves details on the second one vague in its latest news post, but this just keeps reeking of the most incestuous kind of advertising to me.
Break the worlds of the actual games to shove ads for other games in the same genre into it, great idea. Totally won't stick out like a sore thumb or anything. It's very strange how this seems to be seen as a universally good thing by developers since it only makes sense from an advertising viewpoint. Is it due to that stupid invisible mandate requiring every modern hobby to be a """"community"""" now?

Digging more into Moonstone Island, I think that it's probably the worst example of this strange trend.
It crosses over with at least six- 6- other games, two of which aren't even monster tamers. It's got creatures from Terraria, Slay the Spire, Ooblets, Doodle World, Cassette Beasts, and Coromon all included... with possibly more that I just don't know of because the wiki doesn't state their origins and their names are too generic to produce results on Google.

Barely any of these creatures are consistently rendered in the game's actual style (some examples below of their in-game sprites vs some in-game screenshots):


and they all stick out like a sore thumb.

Anyways, that's my rant for today. This trend continues to baffle me and it's making my disappointment with all these poor indie attempts all the greater.

 

[Anonitolia]

The ongoing Turn-Based RPGfest on Steam has an entire category dedicated to Creature Collectors, from which I've learned of a few new ones.

There's the ever-present "what if Pokémon was a roguelike, attempt #7 in the last year alone" (I think it's 7? correct me if I'm wrong), "Beast Bound",

The equally-obligatory "LITERALLY just Gen 1/2 Pokémon in all but name and creature design", "Essentures", with its main gimmick this time around being that all the creatures have stats as painfully generic as your average JRPG party,

The third or fourth Farming Sim + Creature Collector i've seen this year, except this one is branding itself as (quoting) a fresh take on the Monster Taming and Farming Genre, "Chronomon",

and YET ANOTHER "what if Pokémon was a roguelike" that only stands out because of its attempt to not be anime and instead try for some originality with a clay-sculpted visual style, "Sculplings".

It truly depresses me to say that the only upcoming game in the genre I'm kind of looking forward to is Gladieaters, only because I somewhat like its creature designs and the concept actually seems vaguely original. The only problem with Gladieaters is that I hate looking at all of its humans with a passion and that is absolutely impressive given that I generally do not give nearly enough of a shit to be so perturbed by the human designs if the creatures are good.

Seriously, look at this shit.


Those designs aren't good and the sprites somehow make them look even worse. That is an actual feat.

Oh well. The genre has reached a lowpoint in finally being riffed on for shitty horror, so maybe things will start looking up from here.

Hopefully.

 

[30+GameOvers]

Back when I had a PS2, I loved the shit out of Yu-Gi-Oh: Capsule Monster Coliseum. Neat little game with hundreds of monsters, it's a turn based grid game that plays kind of like a mix of chess and, well, Pokemon, complete with a rock-paper-scissor elemental system. Obviously, it's based off Yu-Gi-Oh so you will see the same characters and subplots from the show, but you don't really need to know anything about the anime or manga when there is no real story to speak of. There is plenty of New Game+ content since some monsters only become unlockable after you finish the game, others can only be taken from your opponents after winning and you cannot get them any other way but some opponents have so many unique monsters you need to beat them twice to get all the exclusives. There is individual monster leveling as well and you can even fuse monsters in order to "evolve" them into something much stronger, to give each individual unit it's own sense of personality.
I got to get an emulator and play this game again sometime, I'm getting nostalgic. One other thing, for whatever reason(likely leftovers from Yu-Gi-Oh Duelists of Roses that came out around the same time) there is hundreds of unused monsters you can use only with the use of cheats. As far as I know, they're completely functional, so keep that in mind if you're here for the collecting aspect.

 

[Anonitolia]

Crossposting this here for some extra thread content as this genre slowly continues its descent into "indie flavor of the year" territory. Sigh lol.

Shocked that nobody's brought this up yet. Pipkin, a Pokémon-like Earthbound clone with Undertale and Stranger Things elements.


Genuinely one of the least-creative games i've seen in a while. The only good part of it is the Halloween theme, but even that rings kind of hollow when the designs are so generic and the game itself looks so nonthreatening.


(the trailer is edited by a schizophrenic who can't linger on a shot for longer than half a second, so I picked out some better shots to spare you the trouble of watching it.)

It even has that stupid problem where it rips off existing games so hard that it emphasizes the parts of that original game people didn't like in its marketing.

I think it says a lot that the #1 selling point is just the fact that it advertises itself as being "fall/Halloween" aesthetic first and a game second.

 

[XMassAllYearRound]

Hey, can someone please give me a summary of the "current year" elements of Cassette Beasts? I was looking into getting a few games for switch but I was warned that I probably wouldn't enjoy it, all I know is that it asks for your pronouns, is that all or id the story yet another allegory for trooning out or something?

Crossposting this here for some extra thread content as this genre slowly continues its descent into "indie flavor of the year" territory. Sigh lol.

That's made with RPG maker?
Impressive but the devs should probably look into hiding the fact and prevent people from adding the steam tag, I'm into these sort of games and I had never heard of it because I have RPG maker blacklisted as a tag and I don't think I'm the only one.

 

[Breadbassket]

Hey, can someone please give me a summary of the "current year" elements of Cassette Beasts? I was looking into getting a few games for switch but I was warned that I probably wouldn't enjoy it, all I know is that it asks for your pronouns, is that all or id the story yet another allegory for trooning out or something?

Haven't played it yet but looking into the topic it seems to have at least one non-binary character and one trans character.



Also any of the 5 human partners can be romanced regardless of player gender apparently.

 

[Anonitolia]

Haven't played it yet but looking into the topic it seems to have at least one non-binary character and one trans character.

View attachment 6541784

Also any of the 5 human partners can be romanced regardless of player gender apparently.

It's also got some communist philosophers scattered around the place spouting banalities and is generally insufferable.

That's made with RPG maker?

I have no idea. I wasn't even thinking about game engine when watching the trailer, just how painfully derivative the game looks. I can't even give it credit for its visuals like you can, I think it's the most boring and overdone "high-res pixel" slop an indie could use. It's visually pleasing, I guess, but that's its only redeeming quality.

 

[Sparky Lurker]

Hey, can someone please give me a summary of the "current year" elements of Cassette Beasts?

An isekai with people from multiple different eras ends with "muh capitalism" rants, the worst offender is having a zelda-style overworld where the movement on it is complete ass, every time I dash the game just freezes momentarily to load the next part, the combat is alright but the game just has way too many caveats to be really enjoyable.

 

[Level99Manchild]

Haven't played it yet but looking into the topic it seems to have at least one non-binary character and one trans character.

View attachment 6541784

Also any of the 5 human partners can be romanced regardless of player gender apparently.

An isekai with people from multiple different eras ends with "muh capitalism" rants, the worst offender is having a zelda-style overworld where the movement on it is complete ass, every time I dash the game just freezes momentarily to load the next part, the combat is alright but the game just has way too many caveats to be really enjoyable.

Yea, glad I skipped this turd.

 

[Another Random]

You don't even need to get to the end. One of the early sidequests you unlock is you going around beating up 'vampires'.

It's landlords. You're beating up landlords.