The Last Monsters Windows, Mac game

The Pokemon / Digimon style game that finally grew up with you. Blending turn based and real time combat, survival elements and mature story.

Why we're making this gameWe grew up when the genre was still new, with games like Pokemon Red/Blue, Digimon World and Monster Rancher. We love these games dearly to this day, but as we grew up, we waited for someone to make a game with a deeper, revitalized combat system. To approach the story with mature and honest sensibilities and allow for the player to more fully insert themselves into the world. We wanted success to be all the sweeter because failure was a realistic possibility. That game never came, so we decided to make it ourselves.

How it will play

We want The Last Monsters to play like the best parts of Pokemon with elements of Grandia 2 and Oregon Trail. With a story that blends the wondrous settings of Digimon and the grounded beauty and brutality of Kino's Journey. We want players to care about their adventure because victory isn't always assured and something is always at stake.

Players decide who they are and how they play. Will you raise a few monsters as your eternal companions, traveling the world and fighting alongside your best friends? Or will you use monsters as tools, stealing them from other trainers and casting them off or selling them when they become damaged or are no longer useful?

The Last Monsters challenges you to think strategically in combat and to manage limited survival resources, all the while navigating a world filled equal portions of compassion and malice.

COMBAT

• Blend of Turn Based and Realtime: All participants in a battle move on the Turn Gauge at their own pace, pausing combat only to pick moves when a monster is ready to act. Faster monsters will act more often. Stronger moves take longer to prepare while weaker moves are quicker to execute.
• No Random Battles: The movements of monsters are visible in the tall grass and other hideaways they reside, allowing the player to evade them with proper timing or engage multiple at once
• The Trainer Joins The Battle: In this world, trainers cannot afford inaction. The player (and enemy trainers) will have access to abilities that allow them to control the flow of combat by cancelling key enemy attacks and accelerating or enhancing their own monster's actions. In trainer vs trainer combat, the fight ends when one trainer flees or falls.
• Less Luck, Strategic Decision Making: Battles are about more than rock-paper-scissors style combat or getting three lucky critical hits in a row. Choosing the right move is as important as choosing when to use it. You may need to decide between spending your trainer action on summoning another monster or cancelling a powerful incoming attack. Ordering your monsters to use only the heaviest, most damage attacks may leave them open to being defeated before they are able to apply the damage.
• Up to 3 v 3 combat: Up to 3 monsters can be fielded on each side at one time, allowing for unique team synergy as well as more varied strategies.
• Evolved Element System: There are eight element types in the game, each of which have only two types they are strong against and two types they are weak against, making for a balanced system. However, although Water may advantage over Fire, for example, it will no longer be a free pass to an instant victory.
• Unique Elemental Effects: The effectiveness of status effects is not dependent on luck. Instead, they reliably create opportunities for situational advantages. Enemies can be Burned to make them take more damage, but eventually the fire can spread to others on the battlefield, allowing fire monsters to thrive, but placing non fire monsters in greater danger.
• Reliable Capture Mechanics: When capturing monsters, they are converted to data and energy. If the monster's health is low enough, capture is guaranteed and the target can't fall below 1 HP during this process, but the monster becomes significantly more dangerous during the time it takes to complete the capture. Capturing monsters is about being prepared, not being lucky.

THE JOURNEY: Survival and Trade

We want the act of travelling the world to be engaging, not monotonous. Each time you leave town, it's a brand new micro-adventure, full of potential successes and failures.
• Travel, Trade, Fight: Journeying from one town to the next is dangerous. But there is always profit to be made from hazardous occupations. Spend money at shops and taverns to prepare for your journey, then sell the goods you find in the wild to merchants in other cities or travelling caravans. Trading for food with other non-hostile monster trainers on the trail could save your life, but will likely be costly. Get rich or make just enough to keep food on the table.
• Other Trainers: Some trainers may attack you on sight, desperate for food or simply bereft of morality. Or you may attack other, normally non-hostile trainers on sight because you are desperate for food or simply bereft of morality.
• Camp , Eat , Sleep: Supplement your food supply with ingredients from plants and monsters while traveling. Learn recipes to prepare meals for yourself and your team before resting for the next day's journey. Players will be forced to balance their monster's needs and their own needs in order to successfully survive.
• We All Get Hungry: Enemy monsters and trainers you encounter will also deal with hunger and fatigue. You may encounter them in peak condition or starving and tired, affecting their combat performance in the same way you are affected
  Advanced Trading: People from different regions or towns place value on items differently based on needs and that region’s producible resources. Items found or earned through battle in the field break down into categories like luxury, technology, medical. Sell the right goods to the right people to maximize profits.

STORY

• Create and customize your character as you traverse a world filled with monsters, among which humans are by far the weakest. Even the cutest creatures can shrug off human weapons while retaliating with overwhelming abilities.
• Only monster trainers are able to safely navigate the world outside the of a town's sturdy walls. They do so by harnessing a rare, mysterious and ancient technology to capture and train monsters.
• A shattered world, but for who? Humans struggle against monsters and each other in order to maintain their place the world. Meanwhile, new life flourishes and evolves around them at startling rates. Can humanity survive, or will they be washed away in a world that leaves them behind?
• Evolving Narrative Start from nothing, capture your first monster at great personal risk, and then travel the world, taking actions based on your own motivations. Interact with distant and diverse towns that, in their isolation, have developed unique identities, cultures and tribulations.
• Unscripted Adventures: Feed your favorite monsters more while letting another starve. Become the master of a single element type or diversify your team. Gain the trust and loyalty of your companion creatures. Or ignore the bond of monster and trainer, using them simply as tools for a job. Or if so inclined, steal monsters from other randomized trainers and sell them on secretive black markets that pay top dollar for rare monsters or monsters from distant regions.

We're also on Kickstarter right now! We recently were endorsed Kickstarter as one of their "Projects We Love!" If you like what you see, please supports us there before our campaign ends.

Kickstarter.com