The Pokemon Clone You've Likely Never Played

The Pokemon series has been around for so long that it's easy to forget its roots on the Game Boy. However, that's exactly where the underrated Disc Creatures comes in. Released in 2019, Disc Creatures' goal is to take gamers back to a time before Pokemon Go, Dynamaxing, and #GameFreakLied, to remind players of when the series was laser-focused on catching as many of these critters as possible and pitting them against each other. To accomplish this, Disc Creatures puts its funky creature designs front and center.

Disc Creatures was developed as a solo project by Japanese indie programmer SATTO. In an interview with Destructoid, SATTO explained that the inspiration for Disc Creatures came from his nostalgia for similar games from childhood. 

SATTO said, "When I was a kid, I was really into games that had a lot of unique monsters. Monster-themed games came out one after another ... I was influenced by this and used to show off the monsters I thought up and drew on the edge of my notebook to my friends. Disc Creatures is a game I've made without forgetting the monsters that were born on the edge of that notebook."

Disc Creatures features 200 unique Creatures, all with interesting and offbeat designs. For instance, Porka looks like a narwhal with a broadsword in its forehead, while Puzz resembles a Rubik's cube covered in alchemy symbols. 

Reviews have praised Disc Creatures for the way it embraces the formula of the first few generations of Pokemon games, as well as for it's innovations. As pointed out by PC Gamer, the titular creatures engage can  in battles of three against three, rather than the one-on-one battles of older Pokemon games. There are other key differences to Disc Creatures' combat system, such as the presence of an energy meter than must be charged in order to perform certain attacks. Getting hit while charging will cause a Disc Creature to take more damage, which means that a bit of strategy is required to get each of your active Creatures to use their best moves.

According to HowLongToBeat, the main story of Disc Creatures will take around 25 hours to complete, while completionists may find themselves still collecting Creatures past the 35 hour mark. If that sounds right up your alley, you can snag Disc Creatures on Steam.