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I've been meaning to post something, but designing monsters is really difficult. Perhaps part of the difficulty lies in the fact that new monsters have no narrative legacy to give them weight and justification as designs, so they just appear... arbitrary.

Anyways, I suppose the only approach is "spray and pray" design. See what sticks. I think maybe some of the Pokémon designs weren't actually evolutions, but alternative designs that were thrown in (some don't seem morphologically connected). What I've been meaning to do with mine, is to justify some of the incongruencies by using a summoning and upgrade system based on materials, such as a humanoid figurine or weapon. Bunny + Gatlin Piece = something like Digimon´s Gargomon. This way I can also explain where the technology comes from. In Pokémon you're left to wonder where the spoons and stuff originate.

Like mentioned earlier, materials also help to encounter rewards more lively, as well as working as a lesson (the name of the items being easy foreign words to learn). Monsters are spawned from (and evolved from) materials rather than caught. Possibly monster dupes can be stacked/fused with some benefits, as a replacement of IV/Seed mechanics.

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Matthew Brown (edited)

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2026-09-15 11:00 Has a Monster Rancher feel when you give them precious items to mull over. Then you be can take them on expeditions where they can uncover ancient artifacts. "Mochie found a Humanoid Idol while they were away! Do you want to praise them or scold them?"-- M-M-M-MONSTER! UNLOCK YOUR DISC!
2022-07-13 23:46

Boone

Bottom-left one almost looks like a sentient tooth covered in gum. I like it...

AndroidArts

Ooh, having monsters out on errands independently is a nice idea to make the monsters in the "bank" feel like they are not just numbers being stored, but valuable contributors. It might make it fore fun to grind for extra monsters. Though ideally it should integrate with the edutainment bit, but it might be solvable. Picking a location word via some word puzzle perhaps. Pick right and it will probably return with something.

AndroidArts

I'm not sure about seal/walrus designs in general, but I think the baby stage works yeah. Baby stages are probably going to be easier to design overall.

AndroidArts

I remember thinking about a Progress Quest type game many years ago, back when progress quest was a thing, and I wanted to make one where you kind of ran a small guild, sent heroes out on automatic adventuring, but unlike progress quest you could interact with the characters by equipping them and spending gold, which could be the fun part, or just feel kind of pointless when you didn't have to work for it, haha~

Boone

You really are great at more simple/abstract creature designs. It always feels like I've never seen it anywhere else.