Shadow Minion Village announced

Jason Geyer writes in to announce Shadow Minion Village, a jRPG / sim crossover. He describes it like so:

A mutated crossbreed of a Sim, JRPG, and sandbox game. Control your shadow minions, build a village, craft weapons and items, and send them to their doom vs. horrible beasts of the wildlands.

Players create and control individual minions to toil and fight. Build houses, workshops, and plant crops to keep your minions fed and happy. Hungry minions tend to eat lesser minions, so you need to keep your eye on them. Features dynamic plant-life and beasts, a crafting and collection system, and party-based JRPG style battles.

Based on what the developer has said about it, Shadow Minion Village sounds like an open-ended Dungeon Keeper with side-scrolling exploration, item crafting, and jRPG-style battles. I’m not going to lie: I think that sounds absolutely terrific.

Your villagers will perform whatever tasks you ask of them, but will eat and sleep independently. Oh, about that:

If the minions run out of food, you’ll get a little warning Icon on the screen. You can ignore it for a while, but after a few minutes they’ll get sick of waiting and just eat whatever other minions they come across next, assuming it can beat it in a fight.

Oops.

Shadow Minion Village is being developed for Windows, with possible iOS and Mac ports. Geyer is aiming to release a free public beta sometime in summer 2013.