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.
Man this reminded me of Jade Cocoon. The monsters you could find in the wild were pretty basic (mostly recolors depending on element), but you could endlessly fuse monsters together and it would not only change the stats/abilities, but it would also morph the monster's model. I thought that was the coolest shit ever when I was like 9.
Legit don't understand in an age of procedural generation and AI, there's not been another creature collector (unless there's some obscure indie autist game I've never heard of) that tried to do shit like that.
Man this reminded me of Jade Cocoon. The monsters you could find in the wild were pretty basic (mostly recolors depending on element), but you could endlessly fuse monsters together and it would not only change the stats/abilities, but it would also morph the monster's model. I thought that was the coolest shit ever when I was like 9.
Legit don't understand in an age of procedural generation and AI, there's not been another creature collector (unless there's some obscure indie autist game I've never heard of) that tried to do shit like that.
Funnily enough, there's one called Gug that's attempting to do exactly that (kind of) with the help of AI. It is almost certainly "obscure indie autist" territory, but it's got that impactful creature fusing that you wanted.
Apparently, it launched in Early Access 8 days ago and I just never saw it. I guess the announcement got drowned out amongst the deluge of other announcements I have in my overcrowded feed.
Exhausted today so I won't be writing anything but this irritating tragedy is going to get another full write-up soon. It's been over a year now and I remain salty at how close this game was to being interesting. Oh well.
Apparently, it launched in Early Access 8 days ago and I just never saw it. I guess the announcement got drowned out amongst the deluge of other announcements I have in my overcrowded feed.
Exhausted today so I won't be writing anything but this irritating tragedy is going to get another full write-up soon. It's been over a year now and I remain salty at how close this game was to being interesting. Oh well.
It too often leads to things without a good sense of direction and progression.
When it's done well, they still generally have a good sense of progression to them, because they break the whole world into episodes where they can be found and integrated, and while you can progress the game in any order at times, it's more about completing each area one at a time. See BotW for a good example of that.
When it's done poorly, the whole game feels aimless and weightless, and you never feel like you're getting a lead on anything. Everything you fight magically has the same stats you do, and you never feel like you're getting ahead because fighting an enemy in Green Hills at level 40 is no more interesting of an experience than fighting an enemy there at level 1.
I mean, I get WHY they do this, because one of the big complaints about Pokemon is that it's too linear to where you're always forced on a path and can't go exploring in other places if you feel like it. In Gen1, once you got cut and got out of the dark cave and got the PokeFlute, you could basically do the next 3 gyms out of order. It was also a good way to level up your team without grinding in the grass because you had so many trainers to face. Games like that don't really give you that kind of freedom anymore, and what's worse, they lecture you like you're some kind of dumbass that's never touched a video game before.
On the other hand, your right... level scaling is extremely gay.
Won't win any points really for story, but gameplay is pretty good. The main story is over fairly quick(And is closer to a tutorial), and the post game is where most of the meat of the game takes place. Get a party of 6 monsters, plus a player class that has perks that affect battle. Class can be switched at any time. Killing a creature gets you mana to summon it for your own party. Every creature has its own unique trait. You can fuse 2 creatures together to get 2 traits on your creature. You can also equip an artifact with a 3rd creature trait. In addition, you equip your creatures with spells. Spells can also be upgraded to boost their power, stat buffs, double cast, share the spell with other monsters, and a few other quirks.
Classes have some pretty unique traits as well. Purgatorians for example never have your creatures fully die. When dead, they can continue taking their turn and fighting and you only get wiped out if your whole team is dead. Later buffs make your dead creatures stronger than the living ones. Or you could try the Pyromancer who grants the blaze debuff to the entire fight, your party, the enemy party, everyone gets to bathe in fire. But your extra perks cause fire to heal your party, and when defeating an enemy thats currently on fire, they burn to ash and cannot be revived through any means.
Once you get used to the game, you'll start seeing there are ways to pull off busted trait combos by designing fusions and artifact traits into each monster that play off each other. Such as a monster that ensures your team always has the mending buff(heal every turn), with another trait that lowers incoming damage to any monster on your team with the mending buff, and another that increases the defense stats of your creatures whenever they heal, and another that increases the attack stat whenever any other stat is increased.
As a result, your creatures traits are far far more important than their levels. To the point, the level of the monsters I've been fighting are several thousand above my own.
World exploration is just a random gen level, with a quest specific to the realm you're in, and different treasure/buff spawns throughout. Each realm you beat lets you increase the difficulty through a value called realm depth, which increases the level of the monsters you face. Beating any realm at your maximum realm depth increases your maximum. Every 5 depth you'll face a boss. And the bosses are the big challenges of the game. Early on they're pretty simple. But later game bosses start getting traits that can compete with the busted stuff you can do through creature traits.
To give an example, once you get far enough in realm depth, you unlock something called the gate of the gods. Allowing you to challenge each of the gods of the realms. These battles always scale your party's stats to level 100. God traits are some incredibly busted stuff. Like "Always has 100% damage resistance minus 1% for the number of debuffs applied to the boss", "You cannot manually attack or cast spells", or "take 400% of your maximum health in damage at the start of your turn." You can also tweak scaling on the gods. At difficulty 1, both you and the god's party are level 100. You get 10% of the mana to summon the god for your own party if you win at that difficulty. If you decide you want to get all 100% in one shot you can boost the difficulty to 10. In which case you scale to level 100 and the god to level 1000.
There's a ridiculous amount of content in the game, I haven't even touched on the goblet of trials, prophecies, arena, relics, class ascension, anointments, creature mastery, guilds, false gods, and realm instability. You can bust things so much that the game has safety mechanics to ensure you don't cause an infinite loop(a creature is limited to 25 attacks per turn). The game wants you to try to break it as hard as possible, but offers you foes that get incredibly busted traits as challenges for you to overcome.
Siralim and Monster Sanctuary are the two indie mon-games that I actually think are pretty good.
One of my most basic checks for an interesting Mon Game is what I call the 6 and 4 questions:
Does this game make teams of 6 mons?
Does this game make each mon have 4 moves at any given time?
If the answer to either of the previous questions is 'yes', do the game designers have a good reason why that isn't just "Pokemon did it?"
Games like Coromon, Temtem, Nexomon fall short of this. They've vastly modified the way the type system works, and add various forms of stamina bar, but still, six mons, four moves. No adjustments are made to accomodate for their game's underlying systems being different.
Siralim and Monster Sanctuary have 6 mons to a team, but do not have 4 moves to a mon, and in both cases can answer this question. Monster Sanctuary relies on 3v3 combat with a high focus on synergy, so having 6 mons allows for two full teams. Siralim, meanwhile, is 6v6 with a frankly unhinged focus on synergy.
Other games that obviously escape this are Digimon games, Persona and so on.
Apparently, it launched in Early Access 8 days ago and I just never saw it. I guess the announcement got drowned out amongst the deluge of other announcements I have in my overcrowded feed.
Exhausted today so I won't be writing anything but this irritating tragedy is going to get another full write-up soon. It's been over a year now and I remain salty at how close this game was to being interesting. Oh well.
There's some extra stuff in smaller posts as well, like an attempt at redesigning of one of the game's monsters, but I won't link those because they're very small and insubstantial.
If you've read the first two rants, I'll try to avoid (some of) the complaints I made in them this rant. Unfortunately, little has changed, so I suppose I'll start by just going over what I complained about in the preview.
The game still looks atrocious. Nothing can fix that, nobody has even tried.
The human designs are all extremely ugly. The colors are an awful mix of far-too-saturated and incredibly pastel. The faces are all very chibi and simplified on relatively-detailed bodies with visible body hair/dimples and detailed clothing.
The game itself is still far too similar to Pokémon.
Almost every single creature evolves by level-up, revolves around some kind of attacking type (this time it is literally rock-paper-scissors, with monsters being "body, mind or spirit"), revolves its function around 6 different stats that deal with power, defense, and speed, have unique normal and hidden (natural and "recessive") abilities that change how they play on the battlefield, deal damage on a 40-120ish damage scale, learn all these moves by level-up or tutoring only-
I could go on, but the game really doesn't even try. It's really ridiculous to me that the game even uses the same power scaling as generations 4-6 of Pokémon, I've never seen that before. Basic attacks like Bump have identical damage output to Tackle (before it was buffed later on). Slightly more powerful attacks show that increase in power with an increase of 10-20 points of damage. Really powerful attacks are all 80 to 120 points of damage. It's ridiculous. For fuck's sake, they're so lazy that they couldn't even be bothered to change the name of the starters to something stupid or sports-themed like they did everything else.
This similarity is even so blatant that every single review outlet i've seen tackle the game has had to open their review with something along the lines of "this game might be similar to Pokémon, but..."
There is even an entire fucking character devoted to jerking off Pokémon.
Well that just looks like a washed-up Red, right? That's just an homage. Surely his entire character can't just be a circlejerk, can it?
Boy do you underestimate this team's obsession.
The only credit I'll give the writers is that they had the self-restraint to let him talk. You could arguably look past the intense circlejerking that brought him about if you just read the guy's dialogue and take him to be a default "cynical old man" type with a sports theme instead of literally just washed-up Red with a copyright-free name.
That unnecessary sports league/evil corporation is still there, the nonsensical plot about beating that league to become their leader to stop them from tearing down forests or whatever remains the main conflict for some reason, and the way it's delivered... well, I think I'll just let a few "memorable quotes" from different characters speak for themselves.
(remember: rated E for Everyone!)
And, of course, there are plenty of troons and they/themlets. I don't even know why anyone should be surprised, this could be seen coming from miles away, but the game has pronoun selection and your childhood rival and best friend is a fuckin troon.
This is the least-surprising thing since the sun rose this morning, I will not harp on about it, I will simply acknowledge that it is there and just symptomatic of the truly god-awful writing.
Now for the good stuff: the monster designs themselves. We know what all of the Beasties look like now! So... has there been any improvement over the first batch of blatant rip-offs?
lol
lmao, even
The fact that there are 3 Beasties with the exact same body plan as Goodra, the fat-fuck dragon known for sitting in swamps and spewing mucus, in a game about sports, should tell you all that you need to know about the design philosophy here. It should also tip you off to these peoples' garbage taste in Pokémon and their subsequent proclivities.
Every single monster is based off an existing animal of some kind. Most of these animals are either barely changed from their real-life counterparts (and just heavily stylized + given neon coats of paint) or are an interesting idea that goes absolutely nowhere.
For a refresher, here's what the game's starters look like.
And this is how they evolve.
They are a great embodiment of the rest of the "Beastiepedia".
All three start out with a basic "animal + gimmick" design base.
The chick has shorts,
the mouse has claws,
the frog thing has a little spartan helmet and the best design because I say so.
All three have vaguely punny names that tend to mash two words that describe the design together and call it a day.
Most of their evolutions are furry thirst traps, with even the middle stages having very prominent dyed hair or thick thighs with cutesy faces and no edges.
All of them lose their most defining or interesting traits by the end of their line:
The stupid chick with shorts loses the shorts and retains nothing of its base stage save for a loose tie to birds and some yellow on its feet,
the mouse just gets UwUier and turns into some stupid fursona with long fingers that don't act as claws anymore,
and the poor roman legionary gets turned into some weird generic Goodra clone that only exists to be coomed to.
The only progression all of them have is that they get furrier and furrier until their final stages. The only arguable exception, Kasaleet, is only an exception because it is just a cassowary. It's barely even stylized.
I am not one to typically call random things coomer-bait. But I don't know else to describe this shit.
Bandicraft's body plan is very similar to Lopunny's (for the uninitiated: literal playboy bunny Pokémon with long ears, a thin waist, thick thighs, boots, wrist-cuffs and a protruding chest) for little reason, Hopra is completely disconnected from its first evolution with its most notable features being its enormous thighs and chest protrusion,
and their prevolutions do nothing but change the base stages' cartoony kid forms to more proportionate and feminine body shapes.
This is how a lot of the dex functions. Most of its designs "just get bigger" and/or lose everything interesting about the base forms,
but those that don't tend to devolve into coomer bait or my mom's fursona (sometimes both).
I can at least think of one exception: this line of mimics that was shown in the previews.
Against all odds, it
has a genuinely memorable and cohesive aesthetic throughout
progresses its concept in a linear and interesting fashion
looks both like an intimidating foe and like an interesting ally
only gains interesting characteristics as it goes on
It's not perfect by any means, but I genuinely quite like this line and wish it was in a better game. There are some other decent designs: firebird moth-thing with its split evolution path doesn't look half bad,
the aforementioned Broslidon is actually rather vibrant and memorable as a standalone design (not so much a monster, but I do like its execution as an anthropomorphic character),
an armadillo monster makes perfect sense for a volleyball game and I honestly have almost no complaints about this entire line,
and this eight-tailed sea slug fox is a very interesting if ridiculously furry take on a sea swallow creature.
But... it's pretty easy to notice what all of these creatures have missing, isn't it?
Where the fuck are the sporty bits?
This entire game's premise is based on creatures playing sports. The game's plot is based around sports. This world's society is built around sports. Your teams have names, you get sponsors to help you on your way, you play matches of volleyball and get coached by people to play against other peoples' teams of volleyball monsters, so why do all of these monsters look like generic creature collector fare?
It's because the devs are lazy retards who just needed some excuse/marketing gimmick to make a Pokémon-like that kind of stood out.
That's it.
It's not deep, it's not really debatable. If you look into any of these designs' concept sheets, you will see next to nothing about sports save for how to animate various designs hitting balls.
In fact, you will see some more sporty designs actually getting rejected in favor of more generic fare (see: spider design sheet, where it was going to have an actual NET that could handle the ball... also note how it started out as a knitting-themed spider and its body plan was always near-identical to Tarountula, a knitting-themed spider from Pokémon)
It depresses me to no end that this genre is in such a state that this game's creature designs are arguably top-tier, with a lot of them at least being somewhat visually interesting and many of the more drastic changes to base stages being similarly distinct. I cannot in good faith say that these designs are terrible: a lot of them are at least mediocre or mildly passable, which is seriously impressive given how almost every other creature collector is lucky to get a single mediocre design out of its horrible offerings, and I genuinely like a few of them (as I elaborated above). With a lot more time in the oven and the concepts being in the hands of people who aren't obvious furry coomers, a fair amount of these concepts could've been executed well enough to be iconic.
But instead Beastieball completely fumbles almost every concept it has and puts them in a game that they do not belong to. All of these designs scream "bootleg Pokémon" in that they were made for physical or elemental combat, not human-made sports, and the concept art is absolutely damning in revealing that the developers never even cared for the main gimmick their work is being sold on. It is such a profound waste of potential and talent that it has brought me to this site, a year after its reveal, to bemoan how it lingers in my mind. This stupid game has prompted me to write a 3-hour essay on how much I wish it was better, and how I despise those it was put in the hands of.
If this game was given to almost anyone but the people who actually made it, I guarantee it could've been something good. Hell, it could've been great.
Assuming actual developers got their hands on this and worked with monster designers who had some experience or individuality of opinion, this game could have truly been the Inazuma Eleven x Pokémon clone reviews keep praising it to be. It could've surpassed those inspirations, even, and genuinely stood out as a competent display of innovation in the genre.
It could have brought new life into this stagnant field by showing a new way to integrate creatures alongside humans, creating an interesting Saturday-morning cartoon of a world where this goofy concept was taken to a really cohesive world while remaining lighthearted, taking such a silly concept as "volleyball Pokémon" and going beyond. That armadillo line I praised is a glimpse into that reality: a cute but interesting monster built solely around human sport, integrating it into every part of its design while remaining interesting and natural, almost summoning a coolness factor about it (in a world built on such a silly premise!) that makes you genuinely invested.
It could've been the LEGO Movie of creature collectors: a dumb and flawed concept that exceeds expectations and makes itself into something genuinely impressive and entertaining.
Instead we just get fags and furries pretending that if they change around a few names and make the art ugly enough nobody will notice that they're just ripping off their favorite media franchise wholesale.
I haven't even gotten to talk about the gameplay in-depth. I can't, really-- what is there to say? Battles unfortunately play out quite similarly to Pokémon, with the main kickers being all the shitty marketing slogans that nobody but the most diehard Pokémon autists would give a shit about (no RNG! open world! level scaling! other buzzwords that aren't actual selling points!) and the vaguely interesting but purely disappointing friendship/vibe systems that amount to little more than situational buffs and flavor text.
Everything is turn-based, revolving around levels and typed moves with certain damage outputs affecting six different stats, with the battles playing second fiddle to the shitty fucking plot and its characters (like in NuPokemon), except now that plot thinks it's way better than it is and actively wastes your time with awful zoomer lingo and stupid references to internet shit.
This game remains inseparable from its inspiration, only rising above the truly atrocious indie competitors it faces due to a vague competency in some creature designs and a slightly interesting premise that it uses only as a marketing gimmick and plot hook, and its existence brings me misery every time I remember it.
In a genre full of tragedies, Beastieball stands out against all of them as somehow being the biggest waste of potential in the entire sphere.
Absolutely not, but indie developers aren't aware enough to think outside of their own heads and are often too stupid to even consider that perspectives other than their own (shitty) ones should be taken into account when making their game. This kind of open-world slop has been infecting the industry for nigh-on a decade now and yet somehow people never get tired of it. I'll never understand that.
Just know that you're not alone lol. It's so overplayed at this point.
That's what happens when the main promulgator of it attracts so many mentally-ill freaks to it, I guess. Pokémon's fanbase doesn't even have the same kinds of autists that make genuinely good fan projects that Sonic gets. It really is the lowest of the low, and it's made all the sadder by how impeccably perfect the concept is.
It's so easy to make "magical creatures live alongside humanity" interesting and fun. How do these games manage to completely fuck it up each and every single time.
Highly highly recommend Siralim to any autists out there, it is ridiculously thorough and fun to play.
Monster Sanctuary is on the higher end of the genre but I personally dislike it. A lot of the designs are very uninspired and I find a lot of the level design to be rather bullshit (there's a lot of "you can't reach this platform, you're off by 1 inch, come back when you have this later-game ability" stuff in it that just gives me flashbacks to Sinnoh's HM abuse). Still, it's not a terrible game if you're curious about the genre and I'd recommend it over most other games within it any day.
Somehow, this line sent me down a what-if track of how I'd make a creature collector-type game. Naturally, because I am on the Kiwi Farms and logically this means I am on at least one spectrum, It's ended up spiralling out into a whole thing.
With a weirdly robotic twist, it's inspired an idea for a whole game of what amounts to Jobmons. The mons in this case would be robots built from standard, modular base models, looking unupgraded and unfinished, with most of them being animal-like at this point. And then they can be upgraded into different forms varying based on whatever people modified the base model to be for situations. So, for example, one base model might be a rabbit/bilby with a whistle, and depending on the way it's upgraded it could become á 'tournament-grade' Referee, an 'industrial-grade' foreman-like modelw, and a 'military grade' bugle-er. Through sheer spitballing it then spun off into an idea where there'd be 'prototype models' that came before the modular feature was introduced, and these - while still robotic - would get features that made them look more like ancient or historical creatures and jobs.
I say this more to point out it does not take a lot of effort to come up with both a game idea and a style of mons that fits with that game idea. you just have to have an ounce of creativity in your dull, lifeless head.
The genre has officially become well-recognized enough to earn its own Steam Fest.
Concerned that, with the serious lack of mold-breaking being attempted in any already-released or upcoming game in the genre, the whole thing is going to stay FOTM indie slop forever and never fulfill its true potential. God I need to learn how to code quicker.
EDIT: To give an idea of how weird/monumental this is, here's every single genre-specific Steam Fest revealed and hosted so far. I'm not including Anime Weekend or any of the multiple Indie Weeks because those aren't genres, even if Steam likes to say otherwise for whatever reason.
(and an automation-specific sale from this year that is absent from steamdb for whatever reason)
Creature Collectors got a specialized Steam Sale before:
God Games
Life Sims (that aren't specifically Farming-oriented)
Grand Strategy
Platformers
Metroidvanias
Third-Person Shooters
Sandbox/Physics games
There's gotta be someone high-up who's a fan of this genre, because I cannot imagine any other reason as to why such a young and honestly niche type of game would have so much spotlight on it instead of much larger, more well-established genres like the ones I listed above. There isn't even Pokémon on the platform to justify Creature Collectors getting a Fest like there is Sims for Life Sims or the Paradox trinity (CK/EU/HOI) for Grand Strategy.
Double-posting because just as I said this I found a fucking Vampire Survivors clone thats sole selling point is "bullet hell creature collector". Oddly enough, the visuals and animations remind me pretty strongly of Patch Quest even though the art styles are wildly different. Maybe that's just my brain rotting from looking through so many of these games?
The game itself doesn't look half bad, even if its initial trailer (attached above) barely threads the line between laughably bad to the point of being entertaining and actual poorly-aged cancer, so I think I can actually say I'm looking forward to this one. I've always liked the Chao concept from the sidelines but never had the strength of will to endure the Sonic autism it was attached to, so maybe I'll give this one a shot when it comes out. I'd follow its development, too, but one of the devs (and the only one running a development log, I think) is an actual YouTuber with a bad habit of sensationalizing every title he makes so I'll pass on that.
Anyways, look at these character profiles.
These kick ass and I love almost everything about them. The emphasis on cartoonish stylization with the gloves and exaggerated proportions, the interesting poses, the pleasant colors in the back contrasting the very bright and colorful character designs, that fucking FONT, the drop shadow! Why can't other Y2K imitators be this good? I love how this is done! If it wasn't for how clean the textures looked (+ the color schemes of the character designs, esp the pale pink blush on tan-brown skin) you could've probably fooled me into thinking this was actually from 1998-2002.
Really really hoping to see more stuff like this. It's somewhat trendy slop, yes, but it pulls it off well and at this point the bar is so low that basic competency with a dash of uniqueness is enough to make it noteworthy. Hoping it's the start of an upturn in quality.
A few Frenchmen are making "Pokémon Clover but less funny" and, for some reason, have decided to use Belle Delphine and the Yellow Vest protests as proof that the game is topical.
Devs also made sure you knew just how hysterical it was going to be by dropping some town names.
According to the devs they've already got a decent Asian fanbase, of all things? Curious, I guess. There's going to be a demo some time before release so I might give it a shot if only to see if it has any merit. The spritework is actually pretty decent and I would honestly choose Frieza Octopus as my partner any day, so maybe it'll be worth some of my time.
This x2, the Creature Collector fest got a finalized visual design before both major seasonal sales and any other Steam sale that isn't just cribbing a past sale's branding.
Palworld must've made Steam billions if they're giving Creature Collectors this much love and care.
this game seems unique from the others until you realize it's just pulling a Cobblemon, slapping the creature collecting onto a completely unrelated formula
Also, this is 1000% just made for money. None of this has any effort put into it at all. The designs are either expies of existing Pokémon (that Shellder clone) or just extremely bland mythical creatures with absolutely no flair (Dragon, Minotaur), very basic grammar and UI design is completely absent, there is no plot to speak of, and the visual style is painfully generic. Even Palworld had more imagination than this, which is a fucking feat.
If anyone finds some actually interesting Creature Collecting games coming up, please let me know. I know that the Monster Sanctuary devs are doing something very vaguely interesting with their new game (whose name I forgot), but I am frankly not interested in "Pokémon but roguelike" so my interest only exists because it's actually trying to do anything that isn't just the Pokémon formula.
If there's anything this thread has taught me, it's that if I finally stop being a lazy fuck and decide to do the Mystery Dungeon-style Pokeclone I'm thinking of, then I'll definitely hire @Anonitolia as my beta tester.
Legit don't understand in an age of procedural generation and AI, there's not been another creature collector (unless there's some obscure indie autist game I've never heard of) that tried to do shit like that.
Late by months, but there's a guy on Youtube who's making a game about procedural monster breeding, Critter Crosser. It seems pretty impressive so far, but it's still early in development.
A brief update:
This is its official branding. I appreciate the emphasis on older biological texts: I've seen this kind of style in 19th century encyclopedias of fauna before, it's truly beautiful, and I really appreciate that it's getting some love. The entire thing is pretty sleek, honestly, and it would be pretty much perfect...
...if the actual creatures being depicted were more imaginative.
I'm not expecting super high standards for Steam Fest branding, but I would have appreciated some more creativity as opposed to "Zorua with three eyes" and "frog with flaming tongue." I guess it's appropriate to the genre, but all of the most prominent designs are just weird Pokémon again. I know I use Gyarados as a comparison here, but funnily enough that dragon kind of reminds me more of Seadramon. I don't know why. Maybe the feathers and the helmet?
Regardless, I'm confident that it's not what they were going for. The pleated stomach, shape and positioning of the fins, and forehead crest (+ Gyarados' overwhelming popularity) makes me certain that they were trying to emulate it instead.
Either that, or nothing more than standard animals with the frog and the spider.
It's a shame: there's some interesting stuff down below. The rock scorpion(?) looks genuinely interesting, the automaton golem is at least something sort of unique (and could touch on how a lot of the games take generic fantasy monsters and make them companions), and that barbed frog-man looks interesting enough to work as a centerpiece. But, alas, all the normal population knows is genwun pokermans. Therefore, allusions to them must be used in every advertisement of this genre or the gamers will get bored.
, etc. etc.
...seriously though, is that a scorpion made of boulders?? That kicks way more ass. GIVE THAT THING ON THE FRONT PAGE, STEAM. LEAVE NOT-ARTICUNO ALONE AND SAD IN THAT LITTLE CORNER INSTEAD.
RED ALERT RED ALERT KIWIS
I HAVE FINALLY FOUND A GAME IN THE GENRE THAT IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO DO SOMETHING NEW FINALLY VOIDLING BOUND
look at it. look at it now. it makes me want to cry. i've wanted something vaguely akin to this for years
it is with a heavy heart that I inform you that Voidling Bound comes to us from a team of French-Canadians, but I cannot let this tragedy overshadow the absolute miracle that is THIS FUCKING GAME
From what the devs have described, this is basically a TPS where you play as your creatures. It seems to be mission-based, with gameplay revolving a central hub in space and various missions on an alien planet. There's a bit of an environmentalism slant, with you beating back a "corruption" that's overtaking this planet, but I don't think it'll be too pronounced since the game doesn't seem super story-focused.
You're a nondescript astronaut who has to undergo a kind of neuro-link with these creatures to be able to traverse the planet. These creatures are ones you raise yourself, from eggs that you loot off of the planet (I'm guessing your first creature is going to be some kind of gift?) and hatch at your central hub. The creatures have their own little room where you can interact with (and pet) them, and all of them are distinguished by various differing species.
Pretty standard stuff so far on the creature end of things, and unfortunately I don't think it gets too much more exciting. The creatures seem a little generically "alien," with a Gremlins-like thing with huge eyes and four arms being one of the most outlandish designs I've seen so far, but they have some pretty catchy names that I like (Kerapin is a favorite of mine so far). I do really like the Kwipeck, if only due to an immense love for birds and big black eyes, though its evolution progression seems rather basic:
I hope most creatures in the game don't go this way, since it seems like a serious case of "just gets bigger," but I don't mind the end result too much (looks like some kind of twisted bird-mosquito, I really like the colors) so i'm really not that miffed. I do wish they took the designs to the left of its concept art into account a bit more...
...but, honestly, they may have in a way that we just don't know yet.
See, the game also features some really cool shit that I haven't touched on yet. According to the Steam description, the game also involves:
Individual skill trees for various voidlings (might be species-specific instead of individual-specific, not sure, but either way it's cool):
Huge EVOLUTION TREES for individual voidlings that allow for elemental specialization, differences in appearance, shifts in playstyle, etc. (I've been trying to do something with this in my own project, I adore the concept, and I'm thrilled it's on anyone else's mind)
Breeding for various attributes like natures, mutations, specific genes (of which there seem to be MORE THAN 2000 if this gif is anything to go by-- keep your eyes on the top right corner as it plays)
"Ability upgrades" (not sure if they mean the ability to assign stat points, which the game does have, or something separate)
Fucking species editing, to the point where you can basically craft your own OC species out of hundreds of parts (this is my favorite feature it looks so fucking cool god I miss Spore so badly):
I've been following this game for years, since at least 2021, when the game was a complete unknown. Literally all that was known was their site (which was even more barebones than it is now) and the occasional new hire. The wait has not been disappointing at all, it's very clear that the team behind this has put a lot of effort into the game and I am fucking THRILLED beyond belief that there is finally an attempt to bring this idea into more and more genres!! Seriously, the gameplay genuinely looks fun, and I actually kind of like the aesthetics. I can't say they're very unique, but they're somewhat memorable. I also love the big write-ups for them in their little Voidpedia entries, I really really do love even basic stuff like that in these games. It's a shame that so many other monster catchers don't even go that far.
The best part about all of this? The game is already entering playtesting (I unfortunately do not have enough time to try it out myself which makes me very sad and I will be salty about it), and it'sset to launch IN MID-2025. THIS YEAR.
I doubt it'll be a very smooth launch given the size of the studio, the scope of the game, and the time of development (assuming they've been in active dev since 2020, they're probably Early Access tier by now?). My main suspicions are that the translation will be a bit questionable (they've already misspelled aesthetics in the voidpedia, unless that's some kind of special name) and the missions + upgrades might end up a bit boring, but this is all wild speculation based solely off of some sparse descriptions and I'm going to stop speculating before I make up a game that does not exist yet.
Anyways yes thank you I hope you enjoyed my fever-laden ramblings on a game that I'm REALLY LOOKING FORWARD TO. PLEASE, if you like this genre at all, even a little bit, keep an eye on this. It is a step in the right direction and I am anxiously awaiting its release like nothing else. God willing there'll be way more games like this at the upcoming fest!!!
Fuck, man, this seriously has made my day. Sorry for the long ramble lol, I'm not sure anyone cares, but as long as there's even a little bit of awareness I'm more than happy.
EDIT: The game is not launching in mid-2025 oops that was from an outdated timeline that had their first trailer releasing in November 2024 (it only just came out). The game's press kit now says it's due forJanuary 2026. Oh well, that's still plenty close for me! January isn't a very competitive time, either, hopefully it gets some spotlight as a result
EDIT 2: Also, apparently these guys all had previous industry experience and I somehow never noticed. Most are 10-ish year veterans in their fields. That explains a fair amount, and makes me a bit more confident in the launch, but doesn't help my concerns of being generic too much. Cumulative past experience seems to have been on:
Skylanders series
Borderlands 3
Rainbow Six Seige
CoD
etc.
(they're all Activision/Ubisoft/Beenox guys, so I'm keeping my expectations a bit more mellow now but still optimistic)
Imma be honest, when I see a title like "Monster Breeder", I expect it to be some F95 asset flip trash with an emphasis on the pregnancy fetish. See also: Breeders of the Nephelim or whatever that game Sseth reviewed is called.
wow, this one completely slipped my mind. Did it even have a Steam page before, or did I gloss over it because of the name?
Nevertheless, thanks for bringing it to my attention. It looks positively neat.
EDIT: oh wow, it's been in dev since at least March 2020ish. Covid passion project I guess. Explains why I never saw it, too; I think I only started looking into this stuff in an organized manner on Steam the year after, when the Creature Collector tag got added. Props to this guy for getting it done.
