In case you missed the news, Netmarble recently announced an official launch date for the upcoming free-to-play monster taming game MONGIL: Star Dive. Ahead of this announcement, we were offered the opportunity to speak with Netmarble Monster founder and CEO Ken Kim about the game. He and his team kindly answered some of my sillier questions about the game. An experienced game developer, Kim has been in the gaming industry for over two decades and founded Netmarble Monster (originally Seed9 Entertainment) in 2000.
During this time, Kim has overseen titles such as TOMAK, Save the Earth Again and Marvel Future Fight, as well as MONGIL: Star Dive’s predecessor, Monster Taming. He and the Netmarble team are currently preparing the launch of MONGIL: Star Dive and EVILBANE.
During our call, which was also attended by other members of the team, we talked about MONGIL: Star Dive and its production. Kim noted that the action RPG game has been in development for over five years with a team of over 125 people. It is a sequel to a mobile game simply titled Monster Taming. Many of you will be familiar with MONGIL: Star Dive, even if it’s just through the trailers and other news we post here on MMOBomb.
Nyanners and Monsterlings
And that means you’re probably familiar with the game’s mascot, a rather round black cat called Nyanners. Nyanners, like the other creatures you encounter in this game, is technically a monster. However, Nyanners is built differently. Nyanners is not a creature to be fought and captured, but rather an important part of the creature collection process. We’re talking about a cat that swallows a defeated creature’s soul whole and eventually “defecates” it as a “monsterling” that players can assign to characters.
The monsterlings are worn as accessories such as keychains and provide the characters with buffs. As Kim explained to me, Monsterlings can also be summoned by activating the Link Chain. There will be approximately 165 Monsterlings available in the game at launch, with most creatures found in the wild being tamable. However, not all of the creatures players use are obtained through taming.
Some can only be obtained by combining two tamed monsters. This is something players want to do for two reasons. First, combined monsters have bonus features and stats. Secondly, it is the only way to completely fill the monster chain. Each character’s monster chain has three slots. Two of these are filled by tamed monsterlings, but the third must be a combined monsterling.
When I talked about Nyanners, I naturally wondered about one very important thing. How did they come up with a cat that swallows monsters Kirby-style and turns them into monsterlings? The short answer is that the studio has a lot of cat owners.
The longer answer is that during the creation process, leadership discussed how to make the little guy memorable. One evening they met over drinks and one of the cat owners suggested that Nyanners eat a monster soul and excrete “something shiny.” As a cat owner, I can understand this. We would all be happy if our cats contributed a little more. But we’ll just have to be content with the fact that they look adorable and are soft, unless they’re Nyanners. This kitty has a job to do.
The world of MONGIL: Star Dive
As for the game’s universe, players begin their journey in the European-inspired city of Hananis. This is where the main duo, Cloud and Verna, meet their first adventure companions. Kim explained that the next chapter of the game will move into a realm inspired by medieval Korea, so players can expect some variety soon.
Knowing that the next zone was inspired by Korea, I asked if they would use it to showcase elements of Korean culture that Western players might not be familiar with. I’m told that Netmarble makes everything easy to understand because it’s “really good at localization” and the company doesn’t want to force players to “learn unfamiliar names.” Players can expect it to be “exotic but really attractive.”
Playing time and rhythm of content
I inquired about how many hours of gameplay players can expect when MSQ launches and was told around 20 hours. Kim added that for those who want to do everything, it will take much longer. Players can also expect an update frequency of around six weeks. However, Kim added that content updates will occur approximately every six weeks, while for other things players can expect updates every three weeks.
This rhythm is based on market research about what works best for casual players (and doesn’t kill the development team). Still, they will keep an eye on things to make sure it works best for their players. However, most games of this type tend to stick to a six-week cadence or, in some cases, split content updates so that you essentially get half of the update in the third week and the other half in the sixth week. So at this point it’s a fairly proven method.
Playable characters
Since this is a gacha game, I asked about playable characters. Currently the build contains eighteen characters. Some come from the starting region while others appear in the next one. For those wondering about male characters: yes, there will be husbands. Kim pointed out that there are several “attractive” males that players can collect. Admittedly, I was mostly shown the men with more muscles, so I’m not sure what your twink to guy ratio will be.
Improvements since testing
Since the game has already gone through some testing at this point, they would like to inform the players who participated in it of any significant changes. Kim’s response was that since the game is available on “many platforms,” there is “no magic button that will satisfy everyone” when it comes to combat and the like.
However, the team “spent a lot of time and effort balancing the difficulty to find the best place to satisfy all different difficulty levels.” He goes on to say that they “already know that what they have is strong” and that the goal is to make the game more casual “to appeal to a larger audience” while also “providing the best combat experience for everyone, including mobile players who are already at a disadvantage.” Beta players should also notice a difference in the game’s appearance, as they have done some work on the shader program.