Monsters of Mican

"Honestly, this is one of the best M&M-style dungeon crawlers of recent years. It's completely ridiculous, but it knows what's important: a good mix of exploration, puzzles, and combat challenge, with a high degree of variety and a fast pace. It's not a long game, but it never gets boring."

-JarlFrank review

Monsters of Mican is now on Steam!

New for Content Creators only:

Monster Arena

We are now offering a free to download extra called the Monster Arena. Here you can choose from a number of preset monster vs monster fights (free for all or team) to view and bet on. Or, you can make your own custom free-for-all fight between any number of the 209 monsters available. The fights can be extremely entertaining depending on the combatants and their attacks/choices/comedic timing.

Feel free to try this out and include footage in any content created! The standalone download is available here: 

https://skittzo.itch.io/monsters-of-mican-monster-arena

Password is "Banandit"

2.0 Update:

• Full gamepad controls are now supported!
• Monster Buddies added! Befriend your favorite monsters and then visit them to chat, pet, or feed in the Monster Glade
• Monster Rush added! Face each monster in the game in a series of waves, leading up to a Boss Rush in which you face every boss in the game all at once!!
• UI massively updated! Character avatars have been drastically changed, and now include full body images in the Character screen :
• 

• New semi-guided prologue will get your into the action right away, before character creation!

Creator Guide (Why is it good to stream this game)

Monsters of Mican is a first person party-based RPG with a very light and jovial tone, which features over 170 enemy "monsters", most with clever pun-based names, ranging from downright terrifying (Frightgeist) to cute (Cacrat) to just plain odd (Sucker Puncher). The game features a bestiary which shows a portrait and brief description of each monster defeated, as well as some of their stats and abilities. 

The game also features a very hands-off and open ended approach to exploration and progress. There are ways to heavily break the game, and they are encouraged. Examples include the "Phase Door" ability, which creates an open doorway in any standard wall in the game (including those at the edge of the map itself), the "Transcendent Hunger" ability which attempts to transform any object or enemy into a sandwich, and the "Portal" ability which allows you to teleport to any spot visible to you. There's also "Ultimate Hero" which merges your four heroes into one super-being!

There are also tons secrets placed all throughout the game, some in the earliest maps, which can heavily "break" the difficulty of the game if acessed earlier than expected. But again, I designed the game to actively encourage this type of experimentation!

The soundtrack is fully original, composed mostly by me with just 2 songs composed by a friend of mine, and therefore has no copyright issues. 

The sound effects are made almost entirely by me, doing various ridiculous things with my voice. Including squawking, growling, screaming, and various other guttural utterances. Here's a taste:

https://youtu.be/dq26oJUFA2k

You can also pet the flying fox!

UPDATE: Cheat codes

In a recent update, I have added a "cheat code vendor" named Mister Sweets to the town:

Mister Sweets is a vendor geared heavily towards streaming/video recording playthroughs, since he offers a number of late game abilities in the form of single use wands, in exchange for inputting the correct cheat code. I will be sharing cheat codes via socials (Skitt2501 on Twitter, Skittzo on Bluesky/Youtube/Discord) periodically, but to start, one code which may be very fun and useful for streamers is: 

EATFRESH

Which will grant you 5 charges of a Wand of Transcendent Hunger, meaning you'll have 5 charges to turn anything and everything in the game into a sandwich. Buildings, rocks, caves, skeletons, whatever you want! 

Talking to Mister Sweets a bit may reveal another code, if you'd like.  And if you reach out to me on the game's discord (link on the game page) I can offer another code or two to help effectively show off some of the game's more fun late-game items and abilities.

Here are two more codes to try, which may be fun to play around with:

EPOR

TUVIX

Campaign Information

The game was released on March 25th 2024 on Steam, and at the same time an update posted to the EGS version, and I can begin offering keys for either store as soon as they are requested. The feedback I've gotten from the few people who have played the game has been extremely positive, so I just want to spread the word better so more people can give it a try. 

Game Information

This game is a blobber, which is a term for a first-person party based RPG, typically similar to a dungeon crawler. It features seamless turn-based combat in the same world space as the general exploration (i.e., unlike most JRPGs there's no separate battle screen), using a few unique turn-based mechanics such as the "recovery" system and an inverse MP system that increases MP as you use spells, where using MP while above the maximum threshold will heavily damage that character, but you will never be "barred" from using any spells. 

The game takes place on Mican, a world of monsters, magic and odd and unique history involving what is known as the "Amalgam Anomaly", which is an event that happened long ago that birthed all sorts of odd "amalgam" creatures and monsters right out of myth.

[Side note- the idea for the "amalgam anomaly" came from me experimenting with Unreal Marketplace free assets to design enemies, where I wound up taking some of these free assets and heavily modifying them- or sometimes straight up chopping parts off of some and gluing them to others- to make monstrous "amalgams". The "Handsome" monster (which wound up becoming my mascot) for instance was made from 9 separate instances of "human arms" meshes grafted onto a mesh with a couple of eyeballs and a mouth model added. So that experience designing the monsters fed directly into the ensuing backstory and mechanics of the game!]

Monsters of Mican has a group of four mercenaries traveling to Spiny Island to investigate the sudden appearance of monsters within the island's volcano. You'll travel to the town, which has shops/services/an Italian-American innkeeper, then into the dungeon which leads to a series of mostly-linear maps that take you down into the depths of the mountain, and then eventually up to the top. Each level is hand-designed, no procedural design whatsoever, but features random groups of enemies with a predetermined level range which all drop randomized loot upon defeat, set to the appropriate level for each monster.

The gameplay loop involves exploring a level, defeating monsters, interacting with various objects in the level through a simple mouse-click based interface, solving a few optional text-based puzzles to get extra loot/stat boosts, and then at the end of each level a town portal is available to lead you back to town where you can level up at the trainer, learn new abilities at the magic shop, or shop for new weapons and armor. Resting at the inn will grant you a well-rested bonus, drinking from the town fountain grants you temporary armor boosts, etc. Then you will return to the dungeon from the town's portal exit and explore the next level down.

There are plenty of narrative and gameplay twists in the game, some delving into other genres, with what I like to call a "crazy JRPG-style ending sequence" waiting for you at the end.