Indie monster tamer Coromon is the most Pokemon thing since Pokemon

Coromon is a monster taming JRPG heavily inspired by the Pokemon games, and it looks like one of the most promising Pokemon fan games in recent memory. 

Developer TRAGsoft brought Coromon to the indie highlight stream at today's E3 festivities, showing off the game's lovely pixel art, varied creatures, and boss fights. With over 120 Coromon to catch and train, plenty of puzzles to solve, six Titans to defeat in turn-based combat, and both online and randomizer modes, Coromon's promising upwards of 40 hours of catch-'em-up gameplay. 

TRAGsoft isn't beating around the bush, so I won't either: this game is Pokemon as hell, right down to the name. Its lead characters are Coromon trainers – yes, they're called trainers – wearing blue and orange baseball caps. Its critters get stronger through a tiered evolution system. The amount of times you can use a move in battle is limited by a stamina system. This is a true-blue Pokemon tribute, but that's not a bad thing, and Coromon's art and extra features – especially that randomizer mode, which has added one of the Pokemon community's favorite replay gimmicks right in – help it stand out from the crowd. 

Coromon also seems to be notably more story-driven than the average Pokemon game. It's set in a world at risk of collapse following the appearance of "extraterrestrial forces bringing a mysterious elemental type to your planet," hence your quest to defeat the six elemental Titans. You wouldn't catch a Pokemon Sword & Shield protagonist working for private tech ops to fight aliens and stop climate collapse, I'll tell you that much. 

Coromon is coming to PC and Switch in early 2022, and it's already got a demo on Steam that you can try right now. If you can't wait for the console or PC versions, you can also play it on iPhone and Android today. You'll still have some new content to look forward to next year, as the Switch and Steam versions are adding cross-platform cloud saves, more Coromon, as well as additional side quests and areas. 

Looking for more promising indies? Catch up on everything announced at the Future Game Show powered by WD_Black at E3 2021.