Pokémon Meets Stardew Valley In Latest Kickstarter Success Story

I can't believe after all the failures and flops of kickstarter projects over the years, people are still calling anything that passes its funding goal a "success story". At least wait until the game is out.

The aesthetics, I'm melting.

Please be good please be good

If you can squint some of the monsters look like Pokémon but overall I’d say this is oozing with gen 1 charm. The battles are clearly different.

I hope they are successful.

Yet another game made by the marketing department, with some involvement of the legal team to make sure they don't look too much like anything that will get them sued. This is what i call real people AI games.

You know the Pokémon Company won’t sue this because they have no interest in making games that look good like this anymore.

People say Pokemon should rip off Palworld, but if they really want to make gangbusters money they should have a cozy sim.

This looks lovely. And even though visually it's clearly heavily inspired by early Pokémon games, the creatures themselves don't actually look like Pokémon rip-offs! See! It can be done!

In B4 Mario sues.

To me, it looks like a complete ripoff of gen 1. There’s paying homage to and also plagiarising. This looks much more like the latter to me. Seriously, do none of these “creators “ have any of their own ideas or any creativity any more?

It’s wild seeing people tear down Monsterpatch without knowing anything about the game or its developer. Sean Young has been in the industry for over a decade, founded his own indie studio in 2012, and has successfully launched six games on Steam—two of which made it to the Switch.

Littlewood was a beloved hit, and he’s proven he can deliver. Sure, nothing is ever guaranteed, but with Monsterpatch smashing its $15,000 goal by over five times (and counting), calling it anything but a success is just moving the goalposts. Kickstarter exists to fund projects with potential, and this one has a solid foundation.

And the whole “ripoff” argument? Come on. Yes, it’s inspired by classic monster-catching games—Sean is upfront about that—but it brings in town-building, farming, and a Spellbook system that expands gameplay beyond just battling. You can even trade between your own saves, something Pokémon still locks behind HOME.

I’ve been a massive Pokémon fan from the start, and this game doesn’t detract from that experience in the least. If “paying homage” equals plagiarism, we might as well cancel half the gaming industry. If this game isn’t for you, just say that. But making reductive claims without doing your homework? That’s just lazy.

It’s not a success story until after it is released.
A game could hit its goal and end up being good, but it’s not a real success until it produces a quality product and sells enough non-KS copies to fully sustain the developers.

Mighty No. 9’s KS raised huge amounts of cash, but the end product was pretty universally reviled. That is not a success story.

I’ve seen a company release their KS game (a table top game, Story Wars) and all their promised expansion packs, but then immediately go bankrupt. That is not a success story.

Toby Fox released Undertale on PC with KS, one of the most highly regarded games, and earned enough with sales to port it to other platforms and then work on his new game. That is a success story.

@ChessboardMan I get what you’re saying about long-term sustainability being the ultimate measure of success, but I don’t agree that surpassing a funding goal isn’t a “real success” in its own right. Game development is full of milestones, and securing funding—especially for an independent dev—is a critical one.

Plenty of games that hit their Kickstarter goals go on to be great, and plenty of traditionally funded games fail. Does that mean we shouldn’t celebrate a major step forward just because the entire journey isn’t guaranteed?

Are you suggesting Nintendo Life shouldn’t acknowledge this achievement for a solo developer who has already successfully published six games, two of which made it to the Switch? That seems like an oddly rigid take on success.

@anubisvel I think you misread my meaning. My frustration that you may read in my words is not meant to be directed at the developers, but Nintendo life with their reporting.
A Story by definition is has a beginning middle and end. This can not be defined yet as a Success Story, because the story is not over. To be a success story, it needs a happy end, and the end is far far off.
They have indeed successfully fit their goal, and very quickly. That is a success, but it isn’t a full story yet. The Word I question is Story, or at least combining the two words into a phrase.
I’ve been on KS longer enough to know there are several ways to fail after you hit your funding goal. It is the beginning of their story, and we won’t know what kind of story until we reach the end. Hopefully it is a success. But we don’t know yet.
But yeah, my frustration is with the article itself that the title wording made it sound like the PC version was complete enough to see the fruits of the project. Not that the KS was still running. It’d be more accurate in my mind, and also celebratory to say “Pokemon Meets Stardew Valley project meets goal on first day/with plenty of time to spare: Switch Stretch Goal When/plz?”

Or even “Could this Pokemon Meets Stardew Valley Project be the next big Kickstarter Success Story?”