Soedesco and Studio Aurum announced that they’re planning to launch a new monster-capture role-playing game called Monster Crown. The game is basically a Pokemon clown but with an art-style that seems to mirror Game Boy Color games.

The Steam page mentions that there are over 200 monsters to capture and collect, but the official trailer reveals that there will be a total of 1,000 monsters to capture and do battle with.

Much like other monster-capture games, you’ll also be able to breed and evolve them to make them more powerful. They don’t say if monster types have specific strengths or weaknesses against other types, but I’m sure they do.

You can check out the gameplay trailer below to get an idea of what the mechanics and visuals are like.

As for the story, Monster Crown centers around an evil young woman with malice in her heart and vileness emanating from the depths of her very soul. You’ll have to gather your monster army, or make pacts with them and attempt to free the island from the skullduggery of unscrupulous dastards.

In addition to battling and collecting monsters from around the region, there are also main quests and side-quests where the decisions you make in completing those quests will determine what ending you unlock.

Hopefully the developers manage to focus on the actual gameplay instead of trying to be political, which is what happened to Crema’s Temtem, which was heavily promoted at release but quickly fell off when the developers began focusing on the loud minority of people who were concerned with frivolous features such as pronouns and silly things like “non-binary” villains.

If Studio Aurum sticks to improving and advancing the core gameplay loops, then they might have an opportunity to become a noteworthy PC rival to juggernauts like Digimon and Pokemon.

With the added features of being able to battle other players online or trade monsters with your friends, there’s the possibility of Monster Crown having a long tail end when it comes to player-retention.

We’ll see if they pull it all together when Monster Crown enters Early Access on Steam starting July 31st. You can wishlist the game or learn more by visiting the Steam store page.