And now: a cute monster breeding game from a former genetic engineering tech

pcgamer.com:

When RujiK first played Dragon Quest Monsters, they were disappointed that the results of monster cross-breeding were so… predictable. Every combination was predetermined: set formulas of slimes, drackys, and orcs produced set results, with little call for experimentation.

Years later and now a developer, RujiK is trying to rectify that childhood disappointment with a game named Socket Beast (working title), whose big draw over other monster catchers is its vibrant, GBA-esque art style coupled with a unique animation system which supports combining the game's creatures into potentially thousands of unique offspring. One of RuijiK's WIP demonstrations of the game exploded on Twitter, with a GIF of the game's cheeky little critters exploring its vibrant environments retweeted well over 15,000 times in just a day.

Childhood Dream finished: fully procedural CROSS BREEDING of two monsters. Nothing is pre-rigged. #gamedev #GameMaker pic.twitter.com/eKDUhM16ZCApril 25, 2022

RujiK has created animation cycles for a host of different animals and developed a process to seamlessly blend them together. If you combine a scuttling insect with a slithering serpent, the result will be a new creature blending the physical characteristics and movement of both, a scuttle-slither bug lizard that manages to avoid being too terrifying thanks to the game's charming art direction.

RujiK is also drawing from an expert-level knowledge of biology and genetics: they previously worked for five years as a CRISPR lab tech making genetically engineered mice. To quote the developer, «that's kind of related to monster mixing, I suppose.»

In an early devlog, RujiK compares the process of animating these creatures to the sort of «follow the leader» party