Where do we start?

We’re excited to finally start speaking publicly about Monstro. It’s been something that encompasses a lot of ideas that we’ve been wanting to see in games for a long time. Let’s start off with a little introductions though in case you don’t know who we are.

Right now the team is about three people strong. Two developers (one focusing on coding and the other handling a lot of the art) and a sound designer.



So, Monstro, what is it?

Well, first off we’re not even sure if Monstro is the name that’ll stick. But that’s what we’re calling it for now!

The game itself though pulls a lot of inspiration from Pokemon, World of Warcraft, Super Smash Brothers, Ni No Kuni and League of Legends. That’s a pretty long list, right? Well, we’re mostly cherry picking specific mechanics and dynamics from those games. The end result is something that we’re having a lot of fun making and playing already. Which we think is a pretty awesome sign.

You take control of a new Ranger in a vibrant world, filled with creatures we call Wildings. As a Ranger you’ll have control over a group/party of tamed Wildings from your adventures and lead them into battle, if need be. Battles themselves take place in a 3D arena (pictured below) with real-time one-on-one combat. Once a battle has begun controls shift from the Ranger to the player directly controlling their selected Wilding. Each Wilding has four abilities (operating on a cool-down system similar to a lot of MMOs) that players can specify out of combat from the Wildings list of known abilities. At any point players can choose to swap out their current Wilding out for a different Wilding in their party to help shift the battle in their favor.

Aesthetically we’re going for a pseudo low-polygon look with hard edges and bold colors. We’re kind of shocked that we haven’t seen any other games doing this yet (but if you know of any we’d love to check them out!). Various lighting techniques, unique shaders, and noise filters are going to play a big role in giving character to both the environment and characters inhabiting this world. We’ve been incredibly inspired by artists like Uli Henrik Streckenbach and think it would be awesome to walk around and interact with such a visually pleasing world.

So, why are we doing this? What’s the end game strategy? Well. There really isn’t one right now. This is a game that we’ve wanted to play for a really long time, inspired by some of our favorite game genres and mechanics so we’re making it. There’s really not much more to it. Currently we’re spending nearly all of our free time working on getting the combat done first and foremost. We think that if we can make the combat “feel good,” fun to play and responsive, then we are setting a strong foundation for the rest of the game.

We plan on releasing a series of playable demos in the months to come but we will have a playable demo of the combat by the end of April. After the first demo is out the door we’re planning on building from that and starting to flesh out what it will be like to navigate in the world (out of combat, as a Ranger) with some limited NPC functionality built in. All of our demos we’re releasing are to the public, for free, available in browser as well as a downloadable standalone.

Finally we’d love for feedback as we develop. Sometimes it’ll be hard to please everyone but that’s not what we’re trying to do and hope it’s understood that a lot of mechanics are going to be in flux during development. Post your thoughts either here or to the Monstro subreddit (coming soon! Unless someone beats us to it!) and we’ll try to be as transparent with development as possible.

We’re really looking forward to getting it into your hands!