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[Xgamer4]

I'm kinda surprised this hasn't been posted - it seems right up the alley for this board.

Kickstarter Link - Toby's Island

A group of two people, calling themselves MVisioned, recently added a kickstarter for a game called Toby's Island. The game looks to be a strange/interesting hybrid of Harvest Moon and Pokemon. The creators describe it as follows:

Toby’s Island is a 2D RPG adventure involving monster-raising, town-building and exploration with a blend of randomized and controlled story events.

You play as a young boy with a heavy burden unknowingly forced upon him - to fulfill the task s et by his ancestor of ending a great evil. To do so you will explore an island with many unique environments, meet new spirit companions, raise monsters from eggs to fight alongside you, gather resources for building and crafting - all while facing an assortment of beneficial or dangerous (both random and planned) challenges.

The Kickstarter video looks interesting, but even more interesting (to me at least) are the tech demo video they linked, and the Lore video they linked. The game looks to be decently far along (read: they actually have existing and functional, though likely not release-level, features!). The art style is unique (in a good way - it took me a bit to get used to it, but it's growing on me quite quickly).

The basic/pre-order-equivalent pledge level is 10 CAD (~9 USD). It's Windows only (based off a message I sent - I don't think it specifies this on the KS page).

Here's a few more links:

MVisioning Website
Tech Demo (YouTube)
Lore Summary (YouTube)
Rock Paper Shotgun Article

[MoLAoS]

Needs a better name.

[Meta]

I remember reading their KS page some times ago and thinking that for a breeding RPG their monsters looked weirdly bland and kinda/too much Digimon-like. To stay short, I'm unimpressed.

Spoiler: The monsters (click to show/hide)

But with their low pledge goal they'll surely fund their project.

[DeKaFu]

Digimon...like? I don't see it.

This game looks very relevant to my interests. But then, I adore monster raising games of all stripes and have incredibly low minimum standards for them! So I'll probably play it regardless.

If I'm reading it right, the monster/posession system sort of reminds me of Medarot (monster-raising game where the monsters happen to be robots). In that, you'd build your robot out of assorted parts, but the actual personality and skills of the robot were in the medal you'd stick in its back and you could easily swap it out into another body. It sounds like here, the monsters you raise are basically just vessels for swap-out-able spirits with their own personalities? It's an interesting way to get around the companion-characters-with-set-personalities vs. customized-monster-party issue.

They're promising an awful lot of cool side things (farming, fishing, crafting, etc.) which leads me to suspect they're all going to be pretty shallow. But. Eh. Don't care. I want to play it!

[Frumple]

... nah, those are definitely kinda' digimon-y. Or rather, you could say they're more digimon than pokemon, perhaps. Maybe the kinda' distinct sections sorta' thing they've got going on? Digimon tended to run that sort of way, iirc. Busier in terms of art style.

Definitely won't be backing, but if it gets through and a year or two (or more) from now, it gets a decent sale or included in a bundle... yeah, probably. Be neat to see how it turns out, in any case.

[Xgamer4]

I can kinda see the Digimon comparisons, yeah. I think it's most noticeable with the two bigger monsters in the back. I don't know if I agree with "bland", though. It's kinda hard to describe... it's a clean, simple-looking (though not really simple), style. It's definitely growing on me, though.

Though I'm like DeKaFu - my minimum standards for a monster raising game are really low, and this actually looks like there's some talent and dedication behind it, so I backed. (Besides, I've thrown more than ~9USD down the kickstarter pit with even less to show for it than currently seems to exist for this project...)

[DeKaFu]

I'd say they're a bit too simple for Digimon. Nowhere near enough belts and rings and complicated armour and random symbols.

Too simple to be Digimon, too complex to be Pokémon, not off-the-wall enough to be Denjuu. Bit of what my sister likes to call a "Deviantart aesthetic". Vaguely reminds me of the stuff from Monster Racers (not Monster Rancher) in detail-level and in that there's some stylish original designs (I like the green guy at the left) among others that just look lazy (..that bear).

For comparison the Digimon the blue guy on the right reminds me of is Megidramon, who has an order of magnitude more design complexity.
Further compare the bear in the middle with Bearmon, who has a similarly simple base design but is wearing approximately 15 belts and a backwards baseball cap that says "BEARS" on it.

...I spend a lot of time thinking about monsters okay.

[Neonivek]

I am kind of one of those people who doesn't even think that pokemon had a perfect format in the first place (and neither did Digimon the game that is the closest to this one so far).

This seems interesting, but nothing that really drives it home for me.

But I guess for this concept it is all about execution rather then outright features.

[Moogie]

I remember reading their KS page some times ago and thinking that for a breeding RPG their monsters looked weirdly bland and kinda/too much Digimon-like. To stay short, I'm unimpressed.

Spoiler: The monsters (click to show/hide)

But with their low pledge goal they'll surely fund their project.

Uninspired is the word that comes to my mind. Those are some of the laziest designs I've seen outside those f2p Neopets clones. Oh look, a snake-like monster. Oh look, a turtle-like monster. Oh look, a dragon-like monster. Oh look, Voltorb. Oh look, a... teddy bear??

I like the genres, though, so ultimately the poor art shouldn't detract too much from the playing experience. We'll see.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Great concept, but the monster designs really put me off.

[Neonivek]

The monsters are meant to be very simple in the early game.

Though I guess it is the creator's fault for not putting in a FEW late game designs to entice people.