Welcome to Monster Tycoon!
So, what is Monster Tycoon? It's an entirely custom gamemode built in Minecraft that'll be compatible with both Java and Bedrock players. It's based off of the popular Tycoon genre and inspired from many different Tycoon games. Our goal is to build the server entirely in public, more on this can be found below.
Before we move onto the details, it's worth noting that Monster Tycoon is not yet released and has no external or internal release date set. You can read onto the 'Building Monster Tycoon in Public' section of this blog post to find out more about a release.
In Monster Tycoon, you'll first spawn in on your very own private island and you must venture throughout it to progress through the game. On this island you'll find different types of monsters to utilise, these could be monsters that you must kill to receive something, monsters that mine resources for you so you can upgrade your weapons, monsters that cut down trees so you can place pre-made structures to aid you and more.
The below video is heavily work in progress and is not vindictive of the final game in anyway, a lot is subject to change! A fair amount of progress has been made on the gameplay aspects of the server, although not all finished or planned out. This video showcases the simple damage indicators when killing monsters, a health bar made using a resource pack depletes as the player damages the monster, falling hologram damage indicators display the amount of damage dealt.
The Core Mechanics
Not all of the core mechanics of Monster Tycoon, or the core gameplay for that matter, have been entirely planned out yet. Part of the process of us building in public is that we're able to start discussions on what our community may want to see, so please keep an eye out on our Discord for these sorts of discussions!
🧟 Monsters! Just as we've briefly outlined above and just as it's part of the servers name; monsters are very prevalent in Monster Tycoon.
You'll start off by killing monsters to level yourself up and get used to the mechanics of the server, then you'll unlock access to mining monsters which will mine stone that you can use to upgrade your weapons and tools. Later on in the game, when you need to utilise multiple monsters at once, you'll do so using lumberjack monsters that allow you to create and place pre-made structures that aid you in your adventure.
⏫ At the core of Monster Tycoon is a levelling system that applies to both the player and the monsters.
Player levels allow you to unlock new monster types, upgrades and other gameplay features. You can level yourself up by utilising monsters and through other ways that are yet to be decided.
Monster levels act as a progression system surrounding a monster type and allow you to unlock features specific to that monster that has a certain level. You level up monsters by utilising multiple of the same level, such as killing 3 monsters of the same level or when 3 miner monsters of the same level have mined a specific amount of resources.
🪙 There are currently 3 core currencies on the server; Food, Stone and Wood, each received from monsters you kill, miner monsters and jumberjack monsters, respectively. These are then used to unlock or buy specific things, food is used to spawn more monsters, stone is used to upgrade weapons/tools and wood is used to place pre-made structures.
🗡️ Weapons and tools are used to interact with different types of monsters. A sword is used to kill monsters, a pickaxe is used to make miner monsters mine and an axe is used to make lumberjack monsters cut down trees. These weapons and tools can each be upgraded that give bonuses when using them, like extra damage or more resources mined.
Building Monster Tycoon in Public
Building in public is a topic that's been spoken about several times within the Minecraft community, so we thought why not just do it with Monster Tycoon! Now, we understand that building in public can come with it's own set of concerns, such as potentially fostering communities with high expectations, having to keep up with a certain level of transparency, the risk of people stealing ideas and so on and so forth.
Our sole reason for building in public is that right now the project is being created by a solo game dev, Leo, and that's me, the one writing the blog post! I'm creating Monster Tycoon to challenge myself and learn new practices and I'm eager to share it with the world and potentially assistance in the future, which is why I thought building in public would be the best way to do this, I can share it with the world, create a community and get help from them and in the future, talented game devs.
The way I'm approaching building Monster Tycoon in public is by providing complete transparency. I'll be posting bi-weekly progress updates in the form of blog posts on this website, I'll also announce when new progress updates are available on our Discord. These updates could discuss massive changes, or simply small additions or simply a bunch of technical jargon. On top of that, I'll be posting general showcases of things we're working every now and then before they're covered in detail in a blog post.
The only thing that we won't quite be transparent on, at least for the time being, is a release date. Much progress has to be made before we can think of that in depth, however my idea surrounding approaching a release would be to first start a discussion with the community on what this release could look like, this would also align with our goal of building in public. I hope you can understand why this would be the area where not much transparency will be provided.
Creating Monster Tycoon
This section deserves a whole blog post of it's own which is better suited on my website, as it's more of a personalised post regarding this server.
Check out this blog post if you're curious about how Monster Tycoon was started.