Niklas Jansson

More Monster Roughs

Added 2022-07-13 21:24:35 +0000 UTC

I've been meaning to post something, but designing monsters is really difficult. Perhaps part of the difficulty lies in the fact that new monsters have no narrative legacy to give them weight and justification as designs, so they just appear... arbitrary.

Anyways, I suppose the only approach is "spray and pray" design. See what sticks. I think maybe some of the Pokémon designs weren't actually evolutions, but alternative designs that were thrown in (some don't seem morphologically connected). What I've been meaning to do with mine, is to justify some of the incongruencies by using a summoning and upgrade system based on materials, such as a humanoid figurine or weapon. Bunny + Gatlin Piece = something like Digimon´s Gargomon. This way I can also explain where the technology comes from. In Pokémon you're left to wonder where the spoons and stuff originate.

Like mentioned earlier, materials also help to encounter rewards more lively, as well as working as a lesson (the name of the items being easy foreign words to learn). Monsters are spawned from (and evolved from) materials rather than caught. Possibly monster dupes can be stacked/fused with some benefits, as a replacement of IV/Seed mechanics.