IT BEGINS.
With a whimper, lol. Most of the offerings on the front page look identical to the Steam tag. Mostly the same imitative slop in the big leagues. Cassette Beasts, Beastieball, all that not-Pokémon stuff. Anyways, here's
the free point shop item link for the miserly bastards interested in that stuff.
I find it interesting that Tinykin qualifies? It's a Pikmin-like, a completely different genre in basically every sense of the word. I guess you could call it a Creature Collector in the sense that you collect not-Pikmin to use them in battle against non-Bulborbs and kill them in not-Horrific ways, but it's so far removed from everything else that I think it might end up diluting the definition. None of these creatures are even very unique. The most that they do is slightly change their colors or arms based on the area.
Anyways, I won't nitpick about rules too much. This genre is very ill-defined as of now. Of course some strange inclusions will slip through the cracks. Still, though, a little disappointed that more care wasn't taken to be strict about it. Ah well, there's no obligation.
Back to games: there are almost none of them. It's kind of insane: look at this featured section. Very slim pickings.
Of these 17 pickings:
- one of these is poorly-made furry porn (Sapphire Safari. glad to know so many people are into that, thanks Steam)
- four of them are questionable inclusions in terms of gameplay loop (porn game is porn, idle game (tiny pastures, not the bug one) focuses on collecting copyright-free Animal Crossing villagers that you can't control or do much with, Cult of the Lamb is the same but with significantly worse art, and the stupid lofi sessions thing is a study tool where you kinda just stare at some 3D models while trying to do math homework)
- SIX are very heavily influenced by Pokémon's gameplay loop (collect elemental versions of real animals/objects/ideas that are then used in physical turn-based combat and can change shape through experience, that are caught in some kind of device (often spherical or circular), with four different "moves" that also have elements and a type chart). Digimon gets a bit of a pass because it's its own thing, but I'm including it in this count because Cybersleuth's combat is similar enough to warrant it. (The other inclusions are Palworld, Monster Sanctuary, Creature Keeper, TemTem, and Chronomon)
- Depending on your definition, two to FIVE of these are also Farming Sims (Paleo Pines and Chronomon are definitively of the genre, while you could argue that Palworld and both Slime Rancher games have elements or are outright part Farming Sim).
This is just the popular selection on a blank account. My personal set-up wipes almost half of these off of the board because I'm really not interested in whatever gay shit or Farming stuff Steam has to offer (or furry porn, for that matter). I'm going to be using that personal account for the rest of this post, because I believe I've tuned it to my tastes pretty efficiently, but just know that if I miss a game from the fest that you found interesting then that's probably why.
Also, I don't want to be flashbanged by the furry porn. I know there's more of it. I am not willing to see it.
The main thing I seem to be missing out on (from the accountless page) is a whole lot of idle "productivity tool" stuff, actual idle games, the aforementioned furry porn, and a fair amount of auto-battlers. I'm guessing these are so prolific mainly because they're easy to develop, so they came out quicker than most other attempts at entering the genre, and they're very easy to port from mobile so a fair amount might just be cash-grabs from that.
The most notable of these seems to be
Berserk B.I.T.S, a MEGA MAN BATTLE NETWORK SUCCESSOR...
...in the form of an
idle game and doesn't actually let you participate in the battles. Fantastic, just what every fan of that series wanted, I'm sure.
Oh well. At least they're getting anything at all, I guess.
Anyways, since I'm here for upcoming games as opposed to existing ones, I'm going to switch over to that tab and see what it offers me.
Wow, that's
it?!
For reference:
none of these games are new. They were all announced months, if not years, ago. Some of them have new Steam pages: I don't recall Poglings having a presence on Steam, for example, but none of these are new announcements. What a shame.
It's also probably worth mentioning that two of these are very much stretching the definition of the genre. One of them is a
city-building game with an emphasis on dragons, published by a developer that
exclusively pumps out boilerplate Farming Sim slop or rip-offs of other games, while another is
a visual novel with RPG elements that only qualifies because it's trying to tackle what living in a not-Pokémon world would be like.
Or so the description claims. The actual trailer is complete dogshit for understanding what the game is about, because this is an artsy visual novel with an emphasis on "psychedelic portions" and looking like the Dreamcast's main menu, and the screenshots don't make it any easier. If anything, they only make the premise more confusing.
The latter is being published by
some weird Japanese company that publishes such stellar work as "Giantess Dating Sim" and some anime visual novel about working in a hospital.
Moving on from the "popular" upcoming stuff helps nothing.
Disc Creatures is getting a remake, apparently, which I found notable. It's already been 9 years since it was published (somehow. Jesus, entropy sucks) so I guess the publishers thought it was fitting, The graphical upgrade is appreciated, and I really love how the GBA inspiration goes so far as the UI (
thank you god for letting a game from the year of our lord 2026 release with UI that actually looks vaguely inspired). I can't remember much of the original game, since I played it once near launch and never again, so maybe I'll check this one out once it releases. I don't remember it being particularly notable in any way, and this remake seems to be turning out the same way, but at least it looks pretty.
Then again, I could say the same about Coromon... which is a poorly balanced piece of shit to play. I hope Disc Creatures World doesn't turn out like that.
A
shit load of upcoming games are pure technicality, included in the fest solely to bloat numbers and make the genre seem less dead. Hero Chest, Astral Hunter: Homebound, Serial World and Ryder are all almost completely unrelated games that are just here because there's
maybe kind of vaguely some kind of creature-collecting element in there
somewhere. I don't want to rules nitpick, but this is getting ridiculous: how does a comedic RPG with no tie to monster collecting get let into this fest? A dungeon crawler where you play as a chest trying not to get looted? What do these games have to do with
monsters or
collecting?
The rest of the upcoming games aren't much better, overwhelmingly Pokemon-esque in a bad way. I think I've mentioned a few already, but I'll mention them again here just in case:
- Wilderlocke is a shitty attempt to make Nuzlocking "canon" by entirely missing the point and making it a roguelike instead,
- Disc Creatures World has already been elaborated upon, but it's very obviously a tribute to mainline Pokémon,
- Paplion is like if Monster Sanctuary looked really really bad and got rid of its 3x3s for generic 1x1s,
- Battle Boss is a straight rip-off that makes me sad because this is such a cool concept for a Pokémon ROM hack but it just DOESN'T WORK if you remove the Pokemon part of it,
- Dobumon is trying to be the Gameboy games but isometric, which for reasons unknown they turned into a 4x4 affair,
- (I was going to mention Bagdex here, but I'm going to give it a pass because at least it's trying to add another part of a gameplay loop (base-building, including berry farming, which i'm shocked more games haven't done yet) and has been selling itself as "Brazilian Pokémon" since its announcement. So, yeah, of course it's gonna look like Pokémon. I won't give this kind of stuff flak, it's clearly not going for the same audience and it's honest about its intentions. Also, it bothers to innovate even the slightest little bit in a fashion that actually makes sense. I hope the Brazilians enjoy it.)
- Essentures does not get a pass because it's selling itself as "inspired" but is literally, with almost no changes, just generation 1 mixed with Zelda and on PC,
- SpiriTales is doing the Monster Sanctuary 3x3 thing but otherwise is another Pokémon clone, with its main distinctions being branched evolution trees (good) and 2DHD (much less good),
I'm going to have to stop myself there, there are
so many. I guess they're better than the weird "cozy" shit that's objectively not part of the genre (unrelated farming sims, Animal Crossing clones, etc.), of which there are a lot if you scroll further, but I probably should have known better than to expect some new interesting stuff at this sale event haha.
It's not fun reaching the utter slop section so quickly, though. I only needed to scroll like 5 times for the bottom of the barrel to become visible.
Depressingly enough, most of the innovation in the genre right now seems to be in the flavor of "make it a roguelike and/or add cards to it," which I guess is so prolific because it's easy as shit to make and doesn't require much effort (while having a good excuse to add immature "mature" shit to it because "ohhh your creatures die every runnn it's so evil and scary"). I can count the amount of unique-ish games on one hand, and they're only unique because they're very tangentially related to the core tenets of the genre (
catching and/or raising monsters).
Still, though, that was still the prevailing development in the genre nearly
five years ago around the initial indie explosion... when is the genre going to move on? It took "DOOM-likes" only 3 years to go from calling everything a DOOM clone to calling everything a FPS. Granted, that was during the 90s when it took 10 years to go from predominantly 8-bit to low-poly 3D, but I hope that the Creature Collecting genre gets off its ass and speeds up its incubation sooner rather than later.
They're big games, yes, but not big enough to deter innovation for over half a decade straight.
The only thing deterring innovation for half a decade straight is probably mainline Pokemon fans, come to think of it, but shitty fanbases didn't stop Undertale from inspiring a bunch of half-decent "quirky Indie RPGs" from coming out or ULTRAKILL and its ilk spawning an entire Boomer Shooter sub-genre...
I don't want to have to wait until I'm nearing retirement to play a game that gives me the same feelings of wonder and fun as mainline Pokémon, Fossil Fighters, or Monster Hunter Stories once did.
With the paltry selection that this sale seems to be offering me, though, I guess I'll have to wait a while longer. All it's really done is made me confident that the genre is still quite a ways away from becoming its own thing. It took me a little under an hour to get through
all of these games...
note, also, that the English filter did not work. At least 4 of these games are pure Chinese slop and 2 more were Japanese. Probably tagged improperly to get more clicks.
...I just hope that 2026 brings more interesting stuff into the fold. At the absolute minimum, I'll be looking forward to Voidling Bound and Pokémon's 30th anniversary slop enough to make the year
eventful, but who's to say either of those will be good?
Oh well.
