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#29 | He Set Out to Make a Roguelike. Then He Played Pokémon.
Years into his dev career, Sean Young stumbled into the monster-collecting genre — and it changed everything. Monsterpatch is the game he didn’t grow up dreaming about, but one he felt he had to make.
Indieformer
May 10, 2025
Issue Partner — Sean Young
Issue #29
FRONTLINE
Monsterpatch
Years into his dev career, Sean Young stumbled into the monster-collecting genre — and it changed everything. Monsterpatch is the game he didn’t grow up dreaming about, but one he felt he had to make.
Sean Young didn’t grow up obsessed with Pokémon. He wasn’t sketching evolutions on schoolbooks or dreaming of monster-filled adventures. But somehow, decades after the original craze, Emerald and Crystal found their way to him — and it changed everything.
“I finally played them,” he told me. “And it completely changed what kind of game I wanted to make next.”
That revelation didn’t come during some nostalgic trip down memory lane. It came mid-development. Sean had been building a roguelike monster battler — very different from what we now know as Monsterpatch. But something clicked. The tone, the structure, the emotional weight of those old Pokémon titles stirred something unexpected. He scrapped the direction, reworked the art, redesigned the systems — and quietly set out to make his version of a monster-collecting RPG.
It’s not a copy. The aesthetic nods to the past, sure — but that’s where the similarities taper off. Combat is entirely new. There’s a full town-building layer woven into the core of progression. The game flows city to city, with Archwizards and MoN Champions, but the details — the treasure system, the team dynamics, the way stats and abilities function — they’re all Sean’s.
And through it all, he’s chasing one thing: creativity.
“I want Monsterpatch to encourage expression. Whether it’s your team, your town, or how you play… it should feel like yours.”
The tone? Cozy. Not in a throwaway way, but in the deliberate, crafted sense. A place to switch off, unwind, and feel a little more in control than the outside world usually allows. “Relaxing, satisfying, and rewarding,” he says — three words that don’t usually sit beside monster battles and stat sheets. But Monsterpatch isn’t about dominance. It’s about expression. You don’t grind to survive. You play to belong.
And yet, the market clearly wanted this. Badly. Sean set a goal. Secretly hoped to maybe hit $150k if things aligned. Instead, he crossed $400,000 in just a few days — blowing past his previous campaigns and sending a wave of fan art and excitement his way. “It was mind-blowing,” he admits. “And now, the pressure is on.”
Still, he’s not treating it like a franchise-in-the-making. There’s no talk of transmedia empires or merch deals. Just a clear commitment to building a great game, and launching it — now on both PC and Switch — with the polish it deserves.
The kid version of Sean — the one who missed the Pokémon era entirely — would probably love Monsterpatch. When I asked what younger him would say seeing this all unfold, he didn’t hesitate:
“This game looks super awesome. Now make sure it’s fun and don’t disappoint anyone.”
For dev updates, sneak peeks, and maybe the occasional Skyfarer doodle.
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