Kickstarter game Unleashed offers dark fantasy take on Pokémon ‘catch-em all’ mechanics

Lonely Child Studio has announced a new RPG game, Unleashed, on Kickstarter. A dark-fantasy take on Pokémon mechanics of turn-based battling and creature-catching, the game appears to interpret the genre in an interesting and story-rich way. Unleashed appears to be a uniquely dark take on the genre, with creatures based on psychological-horror-styled interpretations of sins. These creatures are named as ‘Achivaras’ in-game. 

As a dark-fantasy RPG, the graphics of Unleashed, as shown in the trailer, appear to show a drab, dim world, called Mystria, that offers little hope to its inhabitants. People are transformed by a horrible and powerful curse into representations of their darkest impulses, called Achivaras. Mystria appears to be a world full of riches and lots to do, however, and procedural generation of random elements in the game’s maps ensure that new secrets will be discovered every time the player sets out in an area of the game. 

As a new take on Pokémon, style battling, players walk around with an inventory of these creatures, up to 10 of them on the person at any one time. However, in battle only three can be summoned, so strategy is of utmost importance to ensure that one prevails. The game appears to offer a much deeper combat strategy for single-player play than Pokémon’s rather simplistic initial façade of elemental rock-paper-scissors, whereas Unleashed requires players to track sin and virtue types and action combinations for three monsters at a time. 

Unleashed appears to be inspired by a desire to apply Dark Souls fantasy stylings to a genre headed up by a child-friendly, cute creature battler as Pokemon, so it is interesting to see how such a formula will be successful. Most intriguingly, the game appears to offer a crafting system and also an interesting take on level scaling; there is none. Every area in the game (stated as over 300 maps) is accessible from the beginning of the game and so freeform exploration is encouraged. The game will also allow players to build and live in their own houses and even run a farm of all things. 

 Lonely Child Studios is run by a group of volunteers who are looking to make the game a success so that they can become a fully-fledged developer. As a debut title, it certainly appears that their aspirations are to offer unique and deep fantasy stories as part of their games. The first step of achieving this goal is their Kickstarter for the game.. 

Unleashed certainly looks like a unique title worthy of some merit for its darker take on Pokemon, and its deep, rich fantasy world building that is already in place. However, time will tell on whether their Kickstarter will be successful. While their art design appears to be interesting, especially from their web page, the lack of colour may be an issue for some gamers. The abstract nature of the game’s creatures and world-building is certainly applaudable and of artistic merit.

The Kickstarter campaign was launched on the 13^th of February, and more information on the game can be found on its website. Those who want to donate to the Kickstarter can do so here.