I honestly can't believe this was done with ZERO plugins. I would have liked a little more tutorial in that it tells me what petting the monsters does for them, and that you can only catch wandering monsters (not those in the tall grass). An excellent example of a game that has zero dialog and story as well. One of my favorite entries.

Suggestion: Tell the player what petting does, and give some sort of system to hold onto monsters you’ve already captured so you don’t have to give up a powerful party to just try and get to a secret area.

Please see Teal's play-through video, as well as her review of the game in the video description:

Really impressive what you did here! Monster collecting is always fun, and your original character and monsters looked great. I felt like the length was just right for a jam game too.

You clearly put a lot of thought into the attacks and the battle system. Managing interest levels was really cool, and it felt rewarding to finally convince them to join. The map abilities were a cool touch as well. I never did figure out what petting did?

Downside was mostly that combat was a bit too easy. Spamming attack was usually the best and most efficient strategy for enemies, and was effective even against the boss. Felt bad that all these awesome moves were totally unnecessary.

Anyways, super impressive use of the RM engine, and what a demonstration of the inherent power and flexibility of MZ! No plugins can be tough for anyone (also why?!)

I was looking forward to this game when I saw it. It looks nice visually. There are some things I have to wonder if they were really done without plugins. Not to say that they can't be, but it is definitely harder without plugins.

I think most of the issues I found have already been addressed, such as the one gate, the repeated events (for example, if you leave the boss room to the camp, then return).

I did my run with a party of only Crawks (it was a request, even if it was a joking one).

If you use the route finder item, it marks it for all maps, not just the current one. That was a bit unexpected to me. Nice, but unexpected.

Certain skills, such as the double damage skill, seem relatively useless/unreliable. Might need some minor rebalancing, might not. Still something to look at.

You might want to consider in a 'send to base' type option so the players can swap their monsters at a tent or something. That way players can switch out if they want to keep using a monster, but need another for some map purpose.

Great work here! Not much to add to what others have said, but I did do a first impressions video (among others), should you be bored and want to see how I played your game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s50C5GXeQl4

Kudos for not using any plugins!

For me is one of the best game of this jam: I know that the story is not so present (almost no "real" dialogue), and maybe this aspect can be implemented in the future,  but the graphics and the gameplay elements are amazing. I'm a pokemon fan so the concept behind your game that the "monster" are... well, monster, it's genius! I see a lot of potential SmashArtist, keep it up!

Okay, so before I get into it I'll cover the bugs I found, get that part out of the way:

• Tutorial replays if you fight the Crawk when it respawns
•  When Skeyedar uses Glare, the target's name is appended with "undefined" (whether used by an enemy or party monster) (this also happens with Snamair's Thump)
• The boss gate visually separates you from your last monster slot, which is a bit jarring
• Party Cheer raises AP but the battle log message says MP

Surprising no one, SmashArtist has made a visually beautiful game. I love the concept and the Pokémon-esque nature of it, though that also introduces an issue I'll get into in a second.

The intro was cool, but a bit abstract. I wasn't entirely clear on how I got where I was or what I was doing or *why* I was collecting these monsters, but you've said you plan on expanding the story so I'm sure you'll address those points.

Tilesets, like the characters were clean and functional. There is a minor nitpicky issue I could bring up in the placement of the trees next to cliffs (you occasionally have a half-tree that goes flush against the side of a cliff edge, but realistically there wouldn't be room there for the other half of the tree) but that's a very, very minor point in a game that's almost visually flawless.

I liked the tent mechanic, though it would have been good if there were a couple more items to craft. After the Star Sword and Star Shield I didn't need to craft anything else; items were plentiful enough on the map that I never needed to make any.

Battles were, on the whole, fun, but the party system introduces a problem: being able to act with the kid and 3 monsters in battle makes you vastly overpowered compared to the enemy. After I had a full party, in every battle where I didn't want to replace a monster I just attacked with everyone and roflstomped whatever I was fighting. Pokémon gets around this by only allowing one of your monsters to act at any given time, which I think might have lent an interesting strategic element here. Though I understand that you used no plugins and this isn't something you can do easily in the default engine.

The additional on-map ability of each monster is also engaging and fun, but the nature of how the party functions works against it. It's difficult to get attached to a particular monster when you end up having to replace it for no other reason than to bring in a monster that lets you access a part of the map you don't have the ability for yet, and the distribution of these areas meant that on a couple of occasions I had to backtrack just to replace a monster to get the item and then go and replace it again with the monster I had originally because I only wanted that one for its map ability. But again, without plugins that's not something you could easily do anything about so I don't count it against you.

It may be because I ended up partially power-levelling, but I have to disagree with Drifty about the boss being perfectly balanced. With a stun ability, the Star Sword, and a couple of 20+ damage attacks on my other monsters, I made mincemeat out of it. I think it got one attack off the entire fight and it dealt hardly any damage to my monster. I think you could definitely have gotten away with tuning it a bit higher.

Overall, though, this is definitely among my favourite entries played so far, and I think you've done a phenomenal job that stands a very good chance of going far in the contest. Well done!

I thought the art and music were perfect for the game, and I really liked the cutscene at the beginning. I also liked the crafting system, but though the description of the medium star said it could be crushed, but I couldn't actually do it in the crafting menu. The monster adoption system was cool too, but I wasn't sure if I could adopt more than one of the same monster, and sometimes "Agitate" didn't seem to increase a monster's interest so I ended up with only two followers. But I thought it was fun how each monster gave you a different ability on the map (in addition to their battle skills).

By the way, when Skeyedar uses Glare skill, the description comes up as "Kidundefined is..." and "Crawkundefined is...". Also for the Quick jab skill, there's a typo for "Guaranteed". I would suggest either adding diagonal movement or changing the way the trees are mapped because some of the forests were a little difficult to navigate. Oh, and I crafted the better weapon but it did only 1 damage to the boss each time which was disappointing - not sure if that was intentional?

Overall, I thought this game felt very nice stylistically and had some interesting mechanics. As mentioned by others, a more fleshed-out storyline would be a nice improvement if you decide to work on it more. :)

Beautiful introduction? Just clueless on the term Monster and Him sleeping in the bed? Is he dreaming or just being transported to another world. Feel that should've been mentioned instead of aimlessly wandering around in the forest.  Great mechanics and the battle is very unique. Not sure how to properly use the Affection mechanic because it felt to be random upon usage. Great music and crafting system. Visually appealing to the eyes and the color scheme is calming. 

Starting off I noticed a lot of showing and very little telling which is exactly what I would hope for in an RPG. I love the pixel art and the overall aesthetic, it's very well done, great job with that aspect. 

This game has an Omori/Undertale vibe and I really like the theme and art style.  Speaking of Undertale, this game also has a 'pacifism' system that lets you ignore monsters and defend against them to recover until they lose interest and leave you alone. Really cool idea, even if it's been done before, it still works.

This game also takes ideas from Pokemon in that you encounter monsters in tall grass. Not an original idea, but like I said before, it works because it's an idea that is easy for people to grasp. 

Giving the player periodic Tent locations is another great idea that many RPGs of the past have used and they do it because the player needs a way to recover from battles. Soo many games forget to give the player a free rest site and expect them to use items for everything. Thank you for being generous.

The monster taming system is very easy to understand and I think it's executed well. 

The sounds effects are all well picked and quite delightful to a toddler(my 2 year old was interested in this game when the monsters were jumping across the lake for some reason).

There is a lack of animations in many places especially battle skills, but the battle system is nicely balanced with low numbers.

Some monsters don't seem to want to join and never show any interest in the party other than wanting to smash and eat it. I guess this makes sense, but I wasted some time trying to recruit monsters that couldn't be recruited. (At least I haven't figured out how to recruit them yet, if you can get them.) ((It was a cool looking lizard/caterpillar thing.))

The game lets you save anywhere but reminds you to save and gives a free full recover at 'Save Points.' There are plenty of items on the maps and even a key item that reveals the path that you should be taking to the next story progression point. It also shows the way back to the last place you came from, just incase you want to backtrack and grind. This is a really good idea to help people who get lost and become unsure of what to do. 

The maps are great, using a wonderful pixel-art tile-set with good use of the color palette. You don't need millions of colors to be impressive and this game shows that. Thumbs up with some of the screen transitions, I really like the whole 'going through a giant log' to switch maps,  very creative and well executed.

 The battle system is very balanced and well thought out. The last boss fight was perfectly balanced.

There's still room for improvement if you add custom animations, some custom music and sound effects and inject a more compelling storyline that gives the player motive, but regardless Monster is still one of my favorites, thus far in this game jam.

Monster is a very serious contender in this game jam. Good luck to you SmashArtist, I'm very impressed with this game and I know regardless of the outcome of this game jam, you're going to do just fine! 

The gameplay and graphics were top-notch, though I was a bit sad to see there wasn't much of a plot and my interest kind of waned due to that. I did still finish it :)

I noticed a few minor things:

• I could walk up in the bed.
• The ! balloon icon lingers a bit while the monster has already escaped
• In the Boss area, when the door closes behind you if you have 4 party members, it will look like it locks out the 4th.

Those are the only bugs I could find. That said what was Lochrym's special ability? I found all the others, but not his. I'm also sad we had to abandon a monster when we're at full party. I was hoping he'd still tag along in the tent or something and taht I could switch party members there.

This was a good game and I'm astonished you were able to get this done with 0 plugins. I'm looking forward to the expanded version.

Played this for a bit and I really like the premise and atmosphere it has.
I think this has some great potential to be turned into a much larger game.

Definetly going to play it fully when I have the time :)

Good job

This game definitely shows promise considering that the monster designs and the sprite work definitely has some work done to it. That being said, this game seems to go for the more atmospheric type of game, where you kinda don't have a sort of plot to it. That can be a detriment in a sense because it can be interpreted that the plot could be nonexistent. Elijah Kang have already sort of covered my main issues over the game so I won't be repeating them here.

That being said, I do hope there will be some potential game to come out from this if this game's development continues. I sincerely find the concept intriguing and the mechanics interesting and unique. Especially the look of the monsters. I really like their designs.

Interesting game! I played for about 30 minutes and I could tell you put a lot of effort into it. The beginning cutscene was amazing and well done! And I like the monster catching mechanic. I could see potential ways to add depth into it. Btw, there seems to be no cap on how much you can pet your monsters. Not sure if that's intended. The map design could be a bit better. I felt that some of them were unnecessarily big and the diagonal paths are annoying to go through because there is no diagonal movement. I feel like you should introduce more smaller cutscenes to add to the story or lore while you're navigating the first area. I'm not fully invested in the story and the barriers make it hard to continue. It feels like an bad design choice since the battle system encourages the use of recruiting stronger monsters relying less on the player to grind. So the only reason you would block the player from progressing is to waste their time. Overall, great job on the game! I hope you continue to develop it!