My Friends the Monster Trainers

by celia14

co-authored: @rose

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.36

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.71

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.64

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.79

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.21

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.36

Gotta deduce 'em all!

A deductive puzzle game about collectible monsters.
- Read letters from your friends and follow their adventures catching wild monsters and battling other trainers.
- Use your powers of observation and deduction to fill details in your Monster Tracker about monsters' alignments, moves, and habitats.
- Each time you identify three monsters, you'll get more letters and see what happens next in the story.

#### How to play
- In the Monster Tracker on the right, click on the different dropdowns to fill in details about the monster.
- When you get their alignment, habitat, and both moves right, the monster will lock in.
- Each three monsters identified will give you more letters from your friends. Click on them in the top bar to read them and learn about more monsters!

#### Updates
- Made some small style changes after the deadline to fix the crispness of the pixel art.

Play on itch.io!

Tags: #cute, #deduction, #detective, #narrative, #story rich

Genres: puzzle

Comments8

NotExplosive7 Oct 2025, 03:16

Well that was delightful! Such a fun interpretation of the theme.

raysplaceinspace8 Oct 2025, 01:21

Was a unique type of game. I spent a lot of time clicking everything on the screen trying to figure out what to do sadly. I eventually clicked on the alignment box and once it popped out I saw what I was meant to do. I think I needed more guidance to start with before I could get on my way.

chluebi8 Oct 2025, 12:17

Wonderful idea for a game about this theme!

sick machine8 Oct 2025, 13:32

The game's design is cute and the idea of collecting animal data from letters is cool!
It lacked musical accompaniment.
The monsters could be animated (just an idea for a future addition).

CameronPenner8 Oct 2025, 13:38

This is a cool variation of the pokemon collector interperetation! I like that by actually reading the story, you learn about the different pokemon. I definitely found myself wishing for a general notes area that wasn't per monster, as I often had notes that I knew were relevant, but I didn't know which one it was for yet.

I was surprised when I loaded the itch page the game was just there! I'm used to a long Unity loading screen, nice engineering there.

HolySparks8 Oct 2025, 13:39

Very creative way of building a narrative game! In the end we are the collectors of information and knowledge here :)

celia14author9 Oct 2025, 13:11

@cameronpenner Thanks for playing! About the loading time, the game is just plain JS and HTML. 🙂 Works well for simple UI-focused games like this.

Good point about the general notes, we had intended to have one but ran out of time to figure out where it should go. I will take that for the post-jam update.

Pimeko18 Oct 2025, 15:45

Really nice idea, and greatly executed! The whole concept of solving riddles by telling a story are really the types of games I love, and it was really nice :)

Other games by @celia14

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The Archives of Trevosa

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LD59

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The Case of the Dungeon Descent

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co-authored