Monster Tribe

Monster Tribe is a fantasy RPG set on the island of Akama, a land once powered by magical creatures called the Ateyan until a cataclysm known as the Rift destroyed their harmony with humanity and began consuming the island. As a sage born with a unique connection to these creatures, you are humanity’s last hope, tasked with collecting an army of Ateyan, training them, and uncovering the forgotten secrets of the island’s fall to stop the Rift and save what remains of civilization.

Monster Tribe: A Flawed Expedition into a Forgotten World

In the vast and ever-expanding archipelago of monster-collecting RPGs, each new title seeks to carve its own niche, to offer a unique twist on a beloved formula. Monster Tribe, from indie developer Boundless Games, arrives with a premise rich in potential: a post-apocalyptic world, a mysterious ecological catastrophe, and 72 creatures to befriend and battle. Yet, as our expedition into the island of Akama reveals, a promising premise is often the first casualty of flawed execution. This is the story of a game that aimed for the stars but found itself tethered by technical woes and undercooked systems, a cautionary tale of ambition outpacing ability.

Development History & Context

Boundless Games, a small independent studio, embarked on the development of Monster Tribe with a vision to blend several popular genres into a cohesive whole. The game was built using the GameMaker engine, a tool known for facilitating 2D projects but one that can present significant challenges for complex, systems-driven RPGs. The project was successfully funded through crowdfunding, indicating a clear audience appetite for its proposed blend of creature collection, tactical combat, and open-world exploration.

Released on May 1, 2023, and published by Freedom Games, Monster Tribe entered a gaming landscape dominated by titans of the monster-taming genre like Pokémon and critically acclaimed indies like Cassette Beasts. Its launch price point—typically around $5.99, but often discounted to $3.89—placed it firmly in the budget indie bracket, setting certain expectations for scope and polish. The developers, Reece and Ché Geofroy, even supplemented the game’s release with a dedicated lore book, a testament to their deep investment in the world they were building and a rare level of supplementary content for a game of this scale.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

Monster Tribe is set on the island of Akama, a land once sustained by a symbiotic relationship between humanity and magical creatures known as the Ateyan. A cataclysm known as “The Rift” shattered this harmony, causing the Ateyan to vanish into motes of light and human civilization to crumble, its ruins reclaimed by nature. Generations later, the Rift begins to consume the island itself. The player assumes the role of a sage, the last hope for humanity, born with a unique connection to the Ateyan, capable of awakening them from the void and commanding them in battle.

The narrative framework is classic high fantasy: a chosen one must uncover forgotten secrets to save the world. The potential themes are rich—ecological collapse, the folly of exploiting nature, and the rediscovery of lost knowledge. The lore book suggests a deep history waiting to be unearthed, with “terrible secrets of those who came before.” However, critical consensus and player reports indicate that this potential is largely unrealized within the game itself. Exposition is delivered in large, poorly formatted text dumps with a “hideous font,” making the story a chore to engage with rather than an immersive discovery. The narrative, much like the gameplay, feels like a promise made but not kept, a skeleton of a plot without the flesh of compelling characters or impactful dialogue to give it life.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

This is where Monster Tribe‘s ambitions most visibly collide with its limitations. The game proposes a trio of core loops: exploration/resource gathering, monster collection/development, and tactical turn-based combat.

• Exploration and Resource Gathering: The act of exploring Akama is hampered by a deeply tedious resource-gathering system. Interacting with the environment—picking berries, chopping wood, breaking rocks—requires repeated, monotonous button presses with no automation or depth. As noted by critics, this feels less like a meaningful mechanic and more like “game-lengthening busy work,” a blatant padding mechanism that quickly becomes frustrating.

• Monster Collection and Progression: With 72 Ateyan to collect, the game has a respectable number of creatures. They can be developed through an “RPG-style character system” and even have special mutation forms. However, reviews describe them as “interchangeable” and their designs as “matig” (mediocre). The progression system lacks the depth and strategic nuance required to make building a team feel rewarding.

• Tactical Combat: Battles occur on a grid with teams of up to four Ateyan. While the premise of “brains over brawn” is appealing, the execution fails. The combat is described as “clunky” and “atrocious,” with a UI that is “cluttered with all kinds of useless information” and is often “illegible and incomprehensible.” Furthermore, the balance is reportedly broken, with players being “wildly overpowered” to the point of facing no challenge. A tactical system with no need for tactics is a fundamental failure of its core design.

• Technical Performance: The most damning flaw is the game’s technical state. Multiple sources report a game-breaking bug that prevents saving and quitting without crashing, resulting in massive progress loss. One review starkly concluded, “It’s impossible to save and quit the game.” This, combined with general clunkiness, “unrebindable & bad controls,” and other crashes, transforms the experience from mediocre to intolerable.

World-Building, Art & Sound

Akama is conceptualized as a “vast island” where nature has reclaimed the ruins of a fallen civilization. This is a compelling setting that calls to mind games like Horizon Zero Dawn in miniature. The potential for atmospheric exploration is high.

Unfortunately, the visual presentation does not capitalize on this. The 2D, diagonal-down perspective is functional but uninspired. Critics panned the visuals as “equally bad” to the gameplay, citing a cluttered art style and poor font choices that actively hinder the experience. While the lore book boasts concept art, this quality does not seem to have translated into the game’s final pixel art. There is no mention of the sound design in available materials, suggesting it was unremarkable and did little to contribute to or salvage the atmosphere.

Reception & Legacy

Monster Tribe was met with a profoundly negative critical reception. It holds a 40% average score on MobyGames based on two reviews: a generous 55% from GameQuarter and a damning 25% from Gaming Age. User reviews on Steam are “Mixed” (56% positive), but analysis of these reviews shows a dominant undercurrent of frustration, with words like “Frustration” and “Disappointment” being the most common emotions associated with the game.

Its legacy is not one of influence but of caution. It serves as an example of how crowdfunding and ambition are no substitute for polished execution and rigorous testing. The game is frequently described as “unfinished and abandoned by developers,” with no significant post-launch patches to address its severe technical issues. It stands as a footnote in the genre—a game that attempted to blend popular ideas but is remembered primarily for its failures rather than its aspirations. Its only lasting impact is its lore book, which exists as a curious artifact of what might have been.

Conclusion

Monster Tribe is a frustrating case study in squandered potential. Its world of Akama and the mystery of the Rift are narrative concepts with genuine appeal. Its combination of creature collection, tactical combat, and resource gathering is a recipe for a compelling indie RPG. However, every one of these pillars is undermined by poor execution, tedious design, and, most fatally, game-breaking technical failures.

The final verdict is unequivocal. As a historical artifact, it is a reminder of the challenges facing small developers and the importance of technical stability. As a piece of entertainment, it is impossible to recommend. The experience is aptly summarized by its critics: “Better to not play it at all, and save yourself the frustration.” Monster Tribe is not a bad game because it lacks ideas; it is a bad game because it fails, on a fundamental level, to competently build upon them. It remains a flawed expedition into a forgotten world, best left to the annals of what-could-have-been.