Dokimon Quest: GameBoy Color nostalgia while the studio's eyes are already on the sequel

A monster-catching RPG that players themselves describe in two tones: they praise the art and the retro devotion, and take issue with the repetition in its attacks and in what it leaves unexplained.

An engine built for nothing but catching monsters

The studio Yanako RPGs' most recent post isn't about the game itself — it's about the next one. Two updates ago, the note was still dealing with screen sync and with tuning how the character moves, the sort of fix that tends to show up on the eve of a launch rather than well after it. Dokimon Quest arrived in November 2024, and the people behind it are tending to both sides of the same work at once: patching what already exists and drafting what comes next.

The story begins with a search: the protagonist's childhood friend has vanished in the Xelos region, and going after her means facing Explorers chasing the same goal and corporations trying to choke the area. Along the way, it's you who decides, city after city and cave after cave, how deep it's worth going to hunt down creatures to capture and take into battle, leveling up through turn-based fights.

The game grew out of a tool christened MonMae — nicknamed Luna by the studio itself — built to make monster-catching games and still growing along with the people who use it. You can feel the scale of the result: more than 140 creatures to catalog, scattered across cities, caves, temples, seas and mountains that pile up across the map, with nine possible protagonists to open the same journey from different angles. Anyone set on reaching the end of the story spends somewhere between 15 and 20 hours to finish the main mode.

The studio's wall is a workshop, not a showcase

Over recent months, the Yanako RPGs wall hasn't been selling — it's been repairing. An entire update was born to fix what the creators themselves called the character's stiff, sticky way of walking, without giving up the GameBoy Color reference the game chases. The battles gained a clearer way of showing which monster is receiving the command, to put an end to the confusion of aiming at the wrong opponent. In August 2026 came the vertical sync that had been missing, so the screen tearing would disappear on some machines — the studio admitted it had put that fix off, wary of freezing on certain setups.

Other fixes took aim at translation: in late July 2026, localization tweaks landed for Portuguese, Spanish, French and Japanese — the kind of detail that usually falls off a small studio's list of changes. Then came the bigger posts: the Dokimon Quest II page went live with a teaser and a call to add it to wishlists, followed by an announcement of trading and battling between friends without relying on a connection — the same studio still fiddling with this game's details is already building the display for the next one.

Those who recommend it point to the flaw too

One player who spent 81 hours with the game, in August 2026, sums up the general mood: catching creatures is basic but well done, with decent balance between types and movesets. That review's only gripe is that some types are left without good offensive coverage — which forces some creativity in building a team rather than leaning on brute force alone.

Two other points come up again among those who recommend it. A player who finished the story in 46 hours, in July 2026, describes a big world full of rare creatures to track down — but notes that nearly every monster learns the same move and uses the same attack animation, and that the visual variety doesn't keep up with the variety of names. Someone who got close to the end with 19 hours logged, in early August 2026, praises the comfort tools that let you swap your team and adjust stats without having to head back home, and hands out a high score even while admitting it is, deep down, an ordinary game within what it promises.

There are also those who miss a sense of direction. A 20-hour review, from July 2026, describes being adrift on the map: 500 laps without figuring out where to go, solved — the writer suggests — with a clearer quest log. Even so, that review ends smitten with the creature designs and the freedom to catch whatever you please. Even someone who hasn't yet clocked a single hour feels something similar: a Russian-language review, published in August 2026, describes pure atmosphere — grainy art, an 8-bit soundtrack, the feel of an old handheld without seeming trapped in the past.

A start that jams right in the first room

The simplest complaint is also the most telling. A Brazilian review published in August 2026, with no hours logged, calls the art lovely and gives up right there: the character wouldn't walk, and there was no getting out of the game's first room. It's the kind of freeze that dumps you back to the menu without even letting you meet your team's first monster.

The harshest criticism comes from someone who got in near launch. A one-hour review, from August 2026, describes frequent crashes and freezes in the early days, on top of problems with clarity and balance. The same review complains that the studio publicly celebrated its own fixes instead of admitting the game had shipped unfinished.

A third review, with no hours logged and published in early August 2026, cuts to the root: for its writer, the game adds nothing strategic to the monster-catching genre everyone already knows — it's the same old formula, with no twist of its own.

For those the repetition doesn't wear down

The price you pay for Dokimon Quest's nostalgia is always the same: repetition. It splits opinion inside a single review, not just between those who recommend it and those who don't — almost every bit of praise arrives with a caveat about the same move, the same animation, the lack of direction that sends you back to comb the map again.

Anyone who loves a classic capture RPG, has the patience to work out where to go on their own, and doesn't mind seeing the same attack animation across different teams will find a big game here, with creatures full of personality and real freedom to build a team of their own. Anyone hoping for a strategic twist on the genre, or who won't forgive a jammed opening — truly stuck, unable to leave the house — has a better reason to wait for the sequel the studio itself is already announcing.