Mediocre Monster announced

Word reaches me that there’s a jRPG in development that essentially gives the Wreck-It Ralph treatment to jRPGs. In development by Opal Squad, Mediocre Monster has you playing as a…you know…mediocre monster:

Imps. Goblins. Slimes. Shitake Mushrooms. These are a few of the first and weakest monsters you face in classic JRPGs like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Chrono Trigger. These monsters lead a depressing existence: walk around the forest, get slashed by a level 1 hero a few times, and disintegrate in an orange blur. Or so you think.

This is all in a day’s work for the employees of “The Bestiary”, the worldwide leader in random monster outsourcing. Employees go to the office each morning, get dressed, and go to work to pretend to die to heroes for their enjoyment.

Mediocre Monster puts you in the role of Gob, as he goes through everyday life working as a random monster. Follow Gob as he goes through a journey from being a lowly tutorial monster in the Tutorial Forest to being palette swapped into a well-respected monster who still dies to heroes easily, but after slightly more hits.

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty much completely charmed by that description.

As the monster, it’s your job to react appropriately to enemy status effects and elemental strengths / weaknesses, then drop the correct items after your inevitable defeat. Per the developers: “Gob is then paid a weekly salary dependent on his job performance. As more mistakes are committed, more deductions are taken from his salary. Gob can then spend his money around town for training, skills, items, town upgrades, house improvements, and new buildings.”

Here’s a trailer to show what this actually looks like in action:

I hope I’m not alone in thinking that this game looks hilarious. Here is the list of planned features:

• Work as an RPG monster: Follow RPG standards such as attacking taunters and reacting to critical hits.
• Improve your Monster: Learn tricks of the trade as you progress. Improve yourself with new skills, items, and palette swaps!
• Meet Different Hero Parties: Face different hero parties as you progress as an RPG monster. You can eventually see someone familiar!
• Town Improvement: Help the town improve by spending your hard earned salary on town infrastructure improvements and new buildings.

Mediocre Monster is currently about 3/5ths funded on Kickstarter. The developers write that development will continue even if they fail (though at a slower pace, as they won’t be able to work full-time on the thing). Assuming they succeed, Mediocre Monster is planned for release in April 2017; Windows only.