Pokémon has been making us wander into long grass and throw balls at unsuspecting wildlife for three decades now, so it is hardly surprising that plenty of indie developers grew up wanting to put their own spin on the formula.
The good news is that the monster-taming genre has become much more interesting than simply asking, “What if Pokémon, but not Pokémon?”
Some games double down on catching hundreds of creatures and battling other trainers. Others add Metroidvania exploration, deckbuilding, farming, roguelike progression or, in one particularly brilliant case, competitive volleyball.
So, if you love building a team, hunting down new creatures and spending far too long deciding which adorable monster has to sit in storage, here are 10 indie games like Pokémon worth playing in 2026. And no, we haven’t included Palworld in this one, because we’ve already given that its fair share of coverage.
These aren’t ranked, either. They all scratch a slightly different part of that monster-catching itch.
10 best indie games like Pokémon
Cassette Beasts
- Developer: Bytten Studio
- Publisher: Raw Fury
- Release date: 26/04/2023
- Platforms: Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PC (Epic and Steam), Xbox
If Pokémon’s monster collecting appeals to you but you fancy something that feels considerably more adventurous with the formula, Cassette Beasts is an excellent place to start.
Bytten Studio’s RPG drops you onto the strange island of New Wirral, where humans transform into monsters by recording creatures onto cassette tapes. Battles remain turn-based, but the elemental system allows types to interact in much more unusual ways than simply dealing extra damage.
The real headline feature is Fusion. Any two monster forms can be combined during battle, creating thousands of possible combinations rather than restricting the mechanic to a small selection of predetermined creatures.
There is open-world exploration, character relationships and online multiplayer too, while its chunky pixel art and soundtrack give the whole thing a personality very much of its own. Steam currently lists an Overwhelmingly Positive response from players, which isn’t exactly difficult to understand.
If what you love about Pokémon is discovering creatures and experimenting with team combinations, Cassette Beasts is one of the easiest recommendations on this list.
Coromon
- Developer: TRAGsoft
- Publisher: indie.io
- Release date: 31/03/2022
- Platforms: Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PC (Epic and Steam)
Coromon is probably the closest thing here to scratching that classic Game Boy Advance-era Pokémon itch.
TRAGsoft’s monster-taming RPG wears those influences proudly, sending you across the colourful world of Velua to catch and train more than 120 Coromon while working your way through a sizeable story campaign.
You have elemental match-ups, evolutions, turn-based fights and plenty of creatures hiding throughout different biomes. Where Coromon begins to separate itself is through additional difficulty settings, deeper stat customisation and systems designed to give experienced monster-taming fans more control over their teams.
It is familiar without feeling like somebody simply changed Pikachu’s ears and hoped Nintendo wouldn’t notice.
For anyone specifically looking for something resembling the traditional Pokémon adventures they grew up with, Coromon is probably the most obvious starting point here.
Monster Sanctuary
- Developer: moi rai games
- Publisher: Team17
- Release date: 08/12/2020
- Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam), PlayStation, Xbox
Monster Sanctuary asks a simple question.
What if Pokémon was also a Metroidvania?
The answer, it turns out, works remarkably well.
Developed by moi rai games, Monster Sanctuary blends side-scrolling exploration with turn-based monster battles. Creatures aren’t merely useful during combat either; their abilities help you navigate the world, opening routes and uncovering secrets as your collection grows.
Battles use teams of three and place a much greater emphasis on synergies, skill trees and combinations than you might expect from the genre. Building a good party becomes less about simply picking your three strongest monsters and more about understanding how their abilities complement one another.
The result feels simultaneously familiar and completely different.
Monster Sanctuary originally launched in 2020, but it remains one of the strongest examples of an indie developer taking the fundamentals of monster taming and genuinely doing something new with them.
Moonstone Island
- Developer: Studio Supersoft
- Publisher: Raw Fury
- Release date: 20/09/2023
- Platforms: Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam)
Maybe you want Pokémon, but you also want to plant some crops, decorate a house and occasionally go on a date.
Moonstone Island has you covered.
Studio Supersoft combines creature collecting with a cosy life sim spread across 100 procedurally generated islands. You leave home as part of your alchemy training, establish yourself in a new community and gradually begin exploring the surrounding skies.
The creatures here are Spirits, which can be collected and taken into card-based battles. Your deck determines the actions available during combat, turning encounters into something closer to a lightweight deckbuilder than conventional Pokémon fights.
Outside battle, there is farming, crafting, fishing, potion brewing, dungeon exploration, decorating and relationships with the island’s residents.
It is a bit Stardew Valley, a bit Pokémon and a bit deckbuilder, which sounds like somebody was assembling a list of things likely to destroy our free time and simply decided to include all of them.
Beastieball
- Developer: Wishes Ultd.
- Publisher: Klei Publishing
- Release date: 12/11/2024
- Platforms: PC (Steam)
Beastieball technically gives you creatures to collect and train.
It then asks you to make them play volleyball.
And somehow, this might be one of the smartest monster-taming games around.
Developed by Wishes Ultd., Beastieball has you coaching a team of Beasties through tactical, turn-based volleyball matches. Each creature has different strengths and weaknesses, but relationships between teammates are just as important.
Beasties can become best friends, partners, rivals or sweethearts, unlocking unique combination moves depending on the relationship between each pair.
There is an open world to explore and ranked coaches to defeat, giving the structure a vaguely familiar “travel around beating increasingly difficult specialists” feeling, but the battles themselves are completely different.
More than 100 Beasties are already recruitable in the Early Access version, which can currently be played through to the end credits. Wishes Ultd. expects development to continue towards version 1.0 in early 2027.
If your favourite part of Pokémon is building a team rather than specifically firing lightning bolts at someone’s pet turtle, Beastieball deserves your attention.
Aethermancer
- Developer: moi rai games
- Publisher: offbrand games
- Release date: 23/09/2025
- Platforms: PC (Steam)
The developers behind Monster Sanctuary clearly weren’t finished with monster taming.
Aethermancer once again comes from moi rai games, but this time the studio has mixed creature collecting with a roguelite.
You explore the procedurally changing Fractured Ruins with a party of three monsters, taking part in tactical turn-based battles built around managing four different elemental resources.
The major difference is what happens when your monsters die.
Rather than simply visiting a convenient healing centre and pretending nothing happened, creatures exist within a cycle of death and rebirth. Future incarnations can inherit strength from previous lives, turning failure into part of their long-term development.
That creates a very different relationship with your team. You are still collecting monsters and finding combinations between their abilities, but individual runs and permanent progression sit alongside the traditional taming systems.
Aethermancer entered Steam Early Access in September 2025 and has continued receiving updates throughout 2026.
Think Pokémon through the slightly cruel lens of a roguelike and you’re somewhere close.
Yaoling: Mythical Journey
- Developer: RAYKA STUDIO
- Publisher: RAYKA STUDIO, NPC Entertainment, Craftmos Games
- Release date: 19/06/2025
- Platforms: PC (Steam)
Yaoling: Mythical Journey swaps Pokémon’s familiar routes and towns for a colourful Eastern fantasy world filled with creatures inspired by mythology.
Developed by RAYKA STUDIO, the game revolves around collecting Yaolings while investigating a mysterious corruption spreading through the land.
Battles lean towards strategic auto-battling rather than directly choosing every attack. That means much of the depth comes from preparing your team, understanding each Yaoling’s strengths and building combinations that can handle whatever you encounter.
There is plenty happening outside battles too, including exploration, crafting and broader simulation elements.
Yaoling left Early Access and launched in full in June 2025, with the game currently sitting at a Very Positive rating among English-language Steam reviews.
It is another good example of how wide the creature-collecting genre has become. The appeal of finding strange little companions is still there; you are simply using them in a very different sort of battle system.
Anode Heart
- Developer: Stove Powered Games
- Publisher: Stove Powered Games
- Release date: 17/11/2023
- Platforms: PC (Steam)
Anode Heart openly describes itself as an homage to the monster-taming RPGs of the early 2000s, and you can absolutely tell.
But Pokémon isn’t its only influence.
Its futuristic world, digital creatures and general atmosphere bring plenty of Digimon energy too, making it particularly interesting for anyone whose childhood creature obsession wasn’t restricted to one franchise.
You play as Seek, a robot who wakes with no memories on Stack Island, eventually partnering with creatures known as Tama as the line between the physical world and the Net begins to blur.
There are more than 140 tameable creatures, over 300 techniques, breeding-style Reboot systems, a semi-open world and even a separate card-battling minigame.
Anode Heart is also particularly indie in the literal sense: developer Stove Powered Games created and self-published the project.
It might not have the profile of some of the games higher up this list, but if you want something that genuinely feels like somebody took the monster RPGs they loved as a kid and built their own version, this is well worth a look.
Nexomon: Extinction
- Developer: VEWO Interactive Inc.
- Publisher: VEWO Interactive Inc., PQube
- Release date: 28/08/2020
- Platforms: Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PC (Steam), PlayStation, Xbox
If Coromon channels classic Pokémon, Nexomon: Extinction practically walks straight up and asks whether you miss the old days.
VEWO Interactive’s RPG features more than 300 Nexomon to find, tame and evolve as you travel across a traditional top-down world filled with trainers, settlements and turn-based battles.
The setup should immediately feel comfortable to anyone who spent hundreds of hours working through Pokémon’s older generations.
What helps Nexomon stand apart is its willingness to have fun with the formula. The writing frequently pokes at RPG conventions, the story isn’t afraid to become surprisingly dramatic and there is enough variety in its creature designs to make completing the collection genuinely tempting.
Originally released in 2020, Nexomon: Extinction remains one of the most straightforward recommendations for anyone specifically seeking an alternative to classic Pokémon.
Sometimes you don’t need the genre reinvented.
Sometimes you just want another monster to catch.
Ooblets
- Developer: Glumberland
- Publisher: Glumberland
- Release date: 05/10/2023
- Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PC (Epic and Steam), Xbox
Ooblets is what happens when you decide monster battling seems a bit mean and make everybody have a dance competition instead.
Glumberland’s wonderfully odd life sim combines farming, creature collecting and town management with card-driven dance battles.
You grow Ooblets on your farm, build a team and challenge other creatures to increasingly elaborate dance-offs, earning seeds that allow you to grow new companions afterwards.
Yes. You grow them. Just accept it.
There are quests, different regions to explore, clothes and furniture to collect, townspeople to befriend and plenty of farming for anyone who wants something much more relaxed than the usual gym-badge pilgrimage.
Ooblets is developed and published by Glumberland and currently holds a Very Positive Steam rating.
If the collecting side of Pokémon appeals to you much more than making the creatures repeatedly knock one another unconscious, Ooblets might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Bonus pick: Monster Crown: Sin Eater
- Developer: Studio Aurum
- Publisher: Studio Aurum, Red Art Games
- Release date: 30/04/2026
- Platforms: Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch, PC (Epic and Steam), PlayStation, Xbox
We said ten, but this one feels worth sneaking in because it is one of the freshest monster-taming releases of 2026.
Monster Crown: Sin Eater launched in April and takes Studio Aurum’s creature-collecting series in a darker direction.
Its standout idea is True Crossbreeding. Rather than every creature having one fixed design and evolution path, monsters can be bred together to create offspring influenced by their parents, allowing you to gradually construct a team that feels much more personal.
The game combines turn-based combat, exploration and an open world with a considerably moodier tone than most of the genre.
It currently carries a Very Positive Steam rating, and for players who have already exhausted the better-known Pokémon alternatives, it is an obvious newer addition to the list.
Fine. Eleven games. Apparently we collect recommendations exactly the way we collect monsters.
There is plenty of life beyond Pokémon
The best thing about indie monster tamers in 2026 is that developers have largely stopped trying to make “Pokémon, but ours”.
The genre is much more interesting when it takes that basic fantasy; explore somewhere strange, meet creatures, build a team and watch them grow, and then heads somewhere Nintendo probably never would.
Cassette Beasts lets monsters fuse together. Monster Sanctuary turns your collection into Metroidvania abilities. Moonstone Island adds farming and deckbuilding. Beastieball makes your monsters play competitive sport. Aethermancer casually introduces death and reincarnation.
And Ooblets makes everyone dance.
Pokémon might still be the name everybody associates with monster collecting, but there has arguably never been a better time to see what smaller developers can do with the idea.
Just don’t blame us when you finish reading this with another 140 creatures that apparently need catching.
If you liked this article, you may also enjoy our best indie games like Stardew Valley post, or some of our other listicles.
