Another game I was pretty impressed by was a game published by Team 17, famous for the Worms series of games, called Monster Sanctuary. This was by far the most indie looking game, but there is a very good reason for that and don’t let it put you off!
Monster Sanctuary was developed by one man, meaning every asset of the game albeit graphics, design, music, programming were all created and put together by Denis, with only his younger brother Anton helping him with the story, which is mighty impressive considering what the game is all about.
According to the game’s website, “Monster Sanctuary is a monster-taming RPG with party-based combat and Metroidvania-like exploration. New monsters provide additional strategic options in combat and allow you to overcome obstacles to explore new areas and find hidden treasures. The turn-based combat focuses on team synergy and combos, distinguishing Monster Sanctuary from other popular monster collecting games.” In a sense, imagine Pokemon and Final Fantasy had a baby with replayable areas.
Each monster you collect has a unique ability, which can be used outside of battle to reach new areas or unlock new items, as you can select one to follow you. You can choose 3 monsters to fight with out of the 6 you carry, making use of their abilities and types to be more effective against certain enemies, whilst strategically using status moves such as heal during battle.
Each monster gains experience and levels up with their own ‘tech tree’ of skills, both active and passive, almost giving you the choice to follow a class system per monster. As the game is 2D, it’s a platformer style but with turn-based battles taking place inside the levels, almost a completely opposite style to the Pokemon series. The only real issue for me is that the game feels very floaty, where jumping seems to go on for too long, however that’s perfectly reasonable at this point as the game is currently in Early Access on Steam.
As Monster Sanctuary is in Early Access at the moment, any players who are part of the Steam Community are making their suggestions and giving criticism which is being looked into by the developer. It may be a slow journey, but already a lot of changes have been made based on what gamers themselves have commented. Overall the game has received very positive reviews and even has a demo available on Steam so anyone can download it and try it out now. You can pick up Monster Sanctuary for 25% off until November 1st if you enjoy it!
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