Disk Masters is retro-flavored a monster battler ttrpg.

The PDF is 40 pages, with sometimes dense and cramped fonts but a cool and cohesive layout aesthetic. The art is gorgeous, and each monster has its own full page.

Lore-wise, you play a trainer from a region where people have learned how to manifest code from floppy disks.  There's some interesting beats here---like how there's a regulatory authority overseeing summoning because the first summoners raised small armies and it created a Problem---but there's also a few places where I had to struggle with the text. For example "people have used summons for immense good, and evil ill."

Mechanically, Disk Masters is clever and innovative. It's built on a d20 backbone, so it should feel instantly familiar to 5e players, but it handles combat much faster. Fights take a maximum of 10 real-time minutes, and your disk summons behave much like pokemon. Their attacks all have individual MP pools, and they need to rest to recharge them when they run out.

Unlike pokemon, Disk Masters uses a combat grid and tracks movement. It also gives creatures two actions per turn---unless they're doing something extra effort-intensive, like swapping out or resting.

Players carry a maximum of three creatures at a time, but collecting more is encouraged. Reviving creatures costs money, so it may sometimes make sense to swap out instead of reviving---although new creatures faint whenever they roll a 1, so maybe not. Fortunately, every player has the option to start with a unique, player-made creature called a Destined which is immune to this rule---and also a cool way of encouraging fan-modding.

Progression in Disk Masters is granular and moderately complex. You level when the GM decides you do, and each level gives you at least one stat point to allocate. Stat points can increase HP, normal damage, magic damage, to-hit chance, movement, initiative, and more. Every second level, you also gain or improve a Skill, and there's a wide spread of physical and magical Skills, giving you a lot of freedom in customizing the builds for your creatures.

Disk Masters doesn't come with a GMing guide, and you have to hunt around the document a little bit to find all the information necessary to create your own monsters, but the process of creating your own material for the game is really simple. For first-time GMs, running a game might require a bit of prep work.

Overall, if you're looking for a tabletop pokemonlike, Disk Masters is a really good choice. The ruleset is pretty lightweight, but it also has enough crunch that you notice it, and it feels super easy to modify. Absolutely check it out if you can.

Minor Issues:

-Page 6, "each summon as HP" has

-Page 11, Do Focus and Guard last for the rest of combat?

-Page 12, Poison and Sleep look like they drop in usefulness by midgame if I'm reading them correctly. Improving either Skill just increases effect, not effect chance, so once someone has gotten a few points to invest in Health, they immediately drop to sub-50% chance of working. For Sleep, it's already pretty powerful, so maybe this brings it into balance. But for poison---especially if all stacks are resisted with the same roll---it feels like it phases out of usefulness.