These days, Pokémon is not the only prominent creature collector out there. Palworld inspired many to try their own spin on the genre, with games like Honkai: Nexus Anima and countless more all taking the RPG formula in new directions. One such game coming out in the future is Wild Wild Eden, which reimagines the creature collector idea into a more survival based game, similar to Rust or ARK. To find out more about what the game has to offer, and how it differs from other entries in the genre, I had the chance to interview Magnus Games co-founder DC Gan about Wild Wild Eden.
We hope you enjoy this exclusive interview, and we’d like to thank Shueisha Games for making this coverage possible!
In creature collecting games, obviously one of the most important parts of it are the creatures themselves. What did you want to pull off when designing these creatures? Was there a specific theme you wanted to stick to, or was there anything that goes?
DC Gan (DG): So when creating these creatures, the biggest theme for the dev team was making it as if it’s your pet, like a pet family. So in order to do that, what they did was they took actual existing animals such as dogs or cats or like pigs, and then they used those models to create these individual monsters. So it’s a lot more relatable.
Did you design the creatures first, and build the gameplay around them? Or did you build the creatures around the world and the mechanics you’ve created?
DG: It was actually a latter thing you mentioned, so the world setting came first, they basically said they wanted to create a world like this, and then create the creatures that’s related to that world.
What caused the creation of this world? What for you was sort of the most interesting part of building that world, and what did you sort of pull from to do so?
DG: We really wanted to focus on creating a more relatable creature. So like we said, it’s like a pet, so you can create your own town, and then you have like various monster pets around you, and be able to interact with them. It’s kind of separate from like the other big titles out there, which is a little more using monsters as sort of your servants kind of thing, almost like a tool. This game, they wanted to make it as if it’s like a family. That was the theme.
Is that relatability something you worked hard to implement within the gameplay itself? A lot of other creature collecting games, whether it’s a Pokemon or Palworld, are very sometimes fast-paced
and very battle focused. Was the goal to make this a little bit more cozy and relaxing?
DG: So like you’ve mentioned some of the other big titles out there are a bit fast paced. Wild Wild Eden definitely has that element too; so you go out there, you’re adventuring, you meet extremely powerful bosses, if you’re gonna have to use your pet monsters in order to accomplish that. But at the same time, the second theme of the game is also sim, so you’re gonna be able to build and nurture your family, and that is more of a cozy, sort of comfort type thing.
You don’t have to like go out and like hunt things down, instead you can just like kind of come around, instead you can just interact with your little pets, and just have general fun with this, so there’s two completely separate elements that players can enjoy.
Something I found really interesting, and that I really love about this game is the form and function of the creatures, such as how they can play a role in the creation of your town, and how you build it. Was there a particular creature function that you were really proud of during development?
DG: One feature I liked a lot is that, within the game itself, there are these various pig monsters that will act almost like as your servants. So you can send them off to go gather materials, and what makes it interesting though, is that these pigs have different elemental values to them, so if there’s like a fire pig, the fire pig will go out to somewhat warm, and then look out and scout out something like an ore or something. Whereas if there’s like a water pig or something strong against cold, it’ll go out and gather something chilly. I like that there’s elemental aspects to the gathering of the monsters.
Will there be multiplayer in this game?
DG: Yes! There is a single-player mode and multiplayer with up to 20 players at a time. You will be able to visit other people’s worlds as well.
So this game very much feels like a dream come true for a lot of people who are into these sort of sim type games, or creature collectors, or better yet, both. What about this game are you hoping will hook people that have never touched either genre?
DG: So this game obviously, you know, it’s a sim-type game, so it could be a little bit difficult for a newbie, but we’ve made the game, so that in the very beginning, it’s more close to an RPG, you know, with the tutorial section, where you’ll be able to venture off, defeat a monster, gather items, acquire a new pet monster and be able to interact with it. As you go on, when the sim aspect comes in, you could create a super detailed house or a town. But for the newbies, there is an auto-build system that will build everything for you. So you can either go very detailed or just do it all with the press of a button.
Great! I am looking forward to seeing more! Thank you so much for your time today!
DG: Thank you!
