Monster Crown is a monster collecting and training game developed by Studio Aurum and published by SOEDESCO. The style and gameplay are similar to Pokemon. Some even call Monster Crown the grown-up version of Pokemon because of the more mature theme and characters do swear throughout the story.
Monster Crown begins by asking for your name and your pronoun (he, she, or they). It’s nice to see that they’re being inclusive. The game also lets you customize your character with different hairstyles and color schemes.
In the game, you play as a 14 year old Monster Tamer. As you journey across Crown Island and meet new people along the way, you realize there’s an apparent imbalance of power and evil among some people. It is your mission to form a pact with a team of monsters to fight and bring peace to Crown Island as others try to seek power for their own good.
Like most monster collecting/training games, you begin with a starter. I like that Monster Crown actually recommends a starter monster based on your personality (what you picked during the personality test). It’s also cool that although the game does give you a recommendation, you do not have to adhere to what the game thinks is a good starter for you. Ultimately, it is still up to you to decide which monster you want as your starter. For me, Ambigu, the unstable type, was recommended but I decided to pick Darwhol, the will type, because look how cute it is! I’m not sure, though, if picking the one that’s recommended for you will give you an advantage. I don’t believe it does but I can’t say for sure.
As you journey around Crown Island, you’ll encounter many different types of monsters. Monster Crown has a unique type system compared to other monster training games where types follow the original elements such as earth, water, air, and fire. In Monster Crown, monsters follow the types: malicious, brute, will, relentless, and unstable. Each type has its advantage and weakness to other types. It took me a while to get used to the new type system. I even had to write down which type has an advantage against the other but even still, I got confused sometimes. Going off that, I do recommend writing down which types are better against other types because the battles do get a lot harder and if you don’t have the right types then it’s very easy to lose all members of your team.
I did like, however, that each type has its own color because I usually just look at the color to see which one beats which. I think it would be cool to learn more about the different types since it is all brand new. For example, what does it mean to be a will type or an unstable type?
Monster Crown introduces the idea of the synergy gauge, which fills up as you switch monsters in battle. It’s interesting because the game sort of pushes you to switch monsters as it gives you an advantage during battles. Once you fill up the synergy gauge, the next attack deals a great deal of damage and it may even let you use a brand new move like swipe.
Throughout the game, you can form pacts with many monsters (if you have enough pact contracts). Your team can be composed of a max of 8 monsters. After that, the rest of the monsters that you form a pact with will be transferred to the farm where you can later move them to your party or keep them housed there. If you don’t have the max number of monsters in your team, then the newly pacted monster will appear on your team the next time you enter a battle. They will be at full health so you can deploy them the next battle without worry of having to heal them.
Once you reach a certain point in the game, you can also cross-breed your monsters and gain a new kind of monster once the egg hatches. It’s a pretty neat feature! I did go a little crazy with breeding when it first got unlocked. It’s really easy to breed and the eggs hatch really quickly!
In terms of healing your monster team, there isn’t a clinic/hospital where you can bring your team to get healed but in the towns, there’s usually a Kiry that can heal your team members for $15… so make sure to have some gold on you. Likewise, you can purchase Camp Logs (for $100) that’ll allow you to rest and heal up your monsters without having to visit the Kiry in a town. The Camp Logs are only one-time uses. I accidentally thought they were reusable so I ended up wasting one of them… Good thing there’s a quit and load feature!
One thing that I dislike is the fact that if you forfeit/run away from a battle, your whole team automatically dies and you lose all your items. I mean it makes sense if you’re battling and then end up killing all your team members but how come running away kills everyone on your team? I wish you could run away from a battle without having to lose all your items. With that being said, make sure to save your game every chance you get. The game doesn’t auto-save which is a good and a bad thing. The good being that if you’re defeated in a battle, you can quit and enter the latest saved game so that you still have your items. The bad being if you forget to save then your progress is lost. I accidentally forfeited a battle once and lost all my items and decided to quit and log back in only to realize that I didn’t save and lost some good monsters that I recently tamed…
Throughout the game, you may encounter backpacks on the ground. These will provide various items that may be beneficial. For example, in this Tamer Pack, I got a free campfire log! I get excited whenever I see one on the ground. These packs are like treasure chests!
On the note of Tamer Packs, I wish that if you do get defeated in a battle, that you drop your Tamer Pack where you died so that next time, if you happen upon that place, you can pick up your pack and retrieve the items that you lost.
Currently, Monster Crown is in the Early Access stage which contains only about ⅓ of the entire story and range of monsters. I believe there are still some bugs to be worked out in this version. For example, when I view my team I can’t see their avatars, only a shadow, which I’m almost certain isn’t what I’m supposed to be seeing… Also, one of my monsters has “???” as their name which is pretty cool, to be honest, but I’m not sure if that’s meant to be its name. All things said, I’m interested to see how things will unfold for this game in the future!
Check Out the Monster Crown Steam Early Access Trailer:
Monster Crown is available for $14.99 for Windows PC, Mac, and Linux via Steam Early Access.
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I'm a sophomore studying Computer Science at the University of Michigan. I'm really interested in how technology can impact lives through game development. One of the things that I really like about gaming is that, not only is it fun and relaxing, but there are so many ideas you can incorporate into games and their storylines such as meaningful lessons/messages.
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