Furyu’s Reynatis had the best April Fool joke this year. At least, they wear the obvious pandering on their sleeve.
Mushroom growing info[1]
I shared this on the discord, but it is worth posting here also for the sake of permanence. ↩︎
My partner and I were talking about old McDonalds happy meal toys and her favs were the 101 Dalmatians set. These actually had 101 different toys to collect. So we look at youtube to see if there are any videos about them and shockingly there’s an unboxing and review of them from only 8 months ago by done Dutch guy
Sometimes I love the internet
Mydeas
I thought this up the other day.
I was talking to my coworker who was playing Pokemon Go and I jokingly suggested Monster Rancher Go! They had never heard of Monster Rancher so I told them all about it. You used to pop this game into your playstation and after the game loaded you could pull the disc out and put in various cds or other games in the playstation and get monsters. How cool is that! Don’t we all love monsters? I shared a video with my coworker. Here if you care to see it
The guy in it was supremely annoying. The monster was really cute and cool. I thought to myself “What do these monsters do in monster rancher?” Of course. They battle each other. Just like every other monster game.
And that’s when it hit me.
A monster collecting game, where you collect all the monsters. But they don’t fight.
They play sports.
Note: I have done no research on monster games because I wanted to explore this idea without being tainted. If other monster games like this exist that’s just fine. I’m not put off, this is the way of games.
So you get to collectathon unique and interesting monsters and play sports games with them. This game’s narrative takes the path that having these new creatures battle or fight is highly unethical and crazy. Why not have them participate in healthy fun activities outdoors? These monsters are sentient so they can choose to play or not.
The game slowly doles out a few different sports you can play. Perhaps there is monster track and field. There’s definitely Monster baseball. ALL of the monsters can be good at the games.
Here is an idea.
This game would have original monsters but for this example I will use Suezo.
Suezo will originally be quite bad at baseball. Look as he struggles to swing the bat and hit the ball.
But with persistence, he can unlock a skill that makes him quite good.
Note - Suezo stands on his head and does a corkscrew twist. As he unravels his leg he can spin the bat super fast.
Suezo’s wolf friend is also not very good at swinging the bat.
But he can bunt quite well, and he’s so fast he can make it to base easily.
And look at this, Suezo is actually a really good left fielder! He can jump super high!
Perhaps the glove covers his face almost entirely.
Okay so the thing that makes this game extra fun is the story progresses. These monsters are new to the world so the sporting events they are in are evolving with us. The monsters and folks are all about trying to get monster soccer to work. But there’s monsters who are like ghosts and stuff who can just teleport the ball. They realize that soccer needs to be adapted to meet these monsters’ abilities. Thus Super Soccer is born. (We can give it a better name later)
Super Soccer is played on various large fields with differing landscapes like small mountains, volcanoes, rivers etc. There is a pipe approximately in the middle of the field. There may be 3 pipes. The ball MUST go through these pipes before you can score a goal. Each team must pass it through, and once it’s through they can then goal. It’s like a pregoal. This adds into the complexity. Also the goal itself has 3 layers. If you really slam a ball into the goal it will go through all 3 layers but if it just rolls in it will molasses fall into it and you may have an opportunity to get it out.
The story aligns with trying to win the super soccer all star competition. You can also continue to play and enjoy the other sports.
Thoughts. How does one play? Do you control the monsts in super soccer or do you just kind of set it up and watch the match play out? I think a combination of the two. There are many monsters and many abilities to enjoy. Even a very slow monst might be good at guarding a pipe, or using a magic ability.
Other thoughts. Do monsts get tired? If so you send them to the bench! Monsts never fight each other because violence is messed up and the whole point of this is we’re going for the ideal of Downton Abbey the game tim was talking about. If you always push your monst to exhaustion they might leave your team and go to another. You lose your monst and learn a lesson. (I might skip this mechanic but it’s interesting to think about)
There will of course be a sequel where perhaps the main game elaborated on is basketball. Monster Jam or something. Monsts will get to chill in customizable houses and you can dress them in unique outfits.
I’ve also thought about how in Monster Rancher you swap discs. I had this idea for awhile about collecting monsters via scanning any ol QR Code. It was for a card game idea but could be applied to something like this.
Thoughts?
- After writing this I did a small amount of research: check out how you get Tiger.
And look at this baseball themed Suezo!
Not to exaggerate but you’re a genius
Mushroom info
I really like the idea of collecting monsters for anything but battling. To expand on it maybe there could be a neighborhood and as you collect them they just move into a house and you get to go play horseshoes and have barbecues with them on the weekend. And what if the monster collecting aspect was more just convincing them that you’d be the cool neighbor who doesnt complain about Christmas lights being up all year round? Heck, I just talked myself into buying a game that doesn’t exist.
Ah yeah I like this a lot. The monsters start moving in your neighborhood into a few houses. Some of them are roomies. A couple might be your roomies. There could be some fun story telling here.
Horseshoes for sure. Also the prospect of convincing these monsts to move into your neighborhood so you can play sports with them or watch their games. I like this a lot. I’ll think on it for a while. Let it stew.
Glad youre excited about the game that doesnt exist yet!
You’re too kind 
Just having fun thinking about monsts.
Have you ever wondered what old video game music would sound like if it was dingy and off-key, or like it was struggling against itself to convey itself? Well, you’re in luck, because I stumbled across a YouTube channel that takes random video game tracks and re-renders them in Locrian mode.
