Paul Nunes

• Responsible for design of key systems – monster care, adoption, breeding, collections • Maintained GDD, created feature specs, wireframes • Redesigned selling portion of core loop to create a more positive emotion as playtesting had resulted in a sense of loss in the player • Balanced all game economies – level progression, monster progression, currencies • Designed supplementary functions to extend gameplay as part of update roadmap • Led analytics initiative to integrate analytics packages for the first time, allowing data analysis, A/B testing, event systems

The player maintains a shop that can hold up to a maximum of 5 monsters at a time, focusing on the nurturing aspect of the game, rather than scale.

Monsters had core stats related to the cleanliness of their habitat, their hunger level, their desire for affection, and their desire to play. Each monster had a different rate at which the stats would decrease, creating a need for players to return frequently to maintain their monsters happiness. Performing these actions over time would cause monsters to evolve and grow, eventually allowing players to sell and breed them.

Customers would occasionally wander into the shop and request specific monsters. Players would then be tasked with trying to fulfill that request to the best of their ability. Customers appeared in ascending difficulty order, with certain customers being extremely picky about how close the monster needed to match, while other customers would be content with a monster close to their requirement.

Upon successfully selling a monster, the player receives a post card from the monster showing how happy they are in their new home, combating any negative emotions associated with the loss of the monster, and replacing it with a positive emotion, knowing that they have made the NPC and the monster happy.

Monsters are obtained via eggs which must be kept in a special incubator that matches the habitat the monster within belongs to. Each incubator has a set size, forcing players to make trade-offs as to which eggs to keep, or motivating them to rush incubation. The eggs have unique shapes to denote habitat type, patterns to denote the type of monster within, and colors to denote the color of the monster once hatched.

While players can purchase eggs via the egg merchant, a more common way for players to obtain eggs is via breeding. Breeding can be done once a monster reaches level 4, ensuring that players must care for their monsters before creating the next generation. Eggs will take on a mix of the colors of their parents, allowing players to selectively breed in an attempt to get the colors they want.

The meta-game in Monster Pet Shop hinges on monster collection, centered around the players monsterpedia. This view allows players to see the monsters they've unlocked, and slowly reveals information about hidden monsters as players discover them via social mechanics, or via the egg vendor. Each species of monster has 4 mutations that the player needs to collect in addition to the various species of monster. These variants can only be obtained via breeding, ensuring players are constantly purchasing new eggs, caring for their monsters, and breeding them in an attempt to complete their collection.