''Let's Hunt Monsters'' () is a 2019 geolocation-based

mobile game A mobile game is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any Mobile device, portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet computer, table ...

developed by

TiMi Studio Group TiMi Studio Group ( zh, s=天美工作室群, p=Tiānměi Gōngzuò Shìqún) is a Chinese video game developer based in Shenzhen. A subsidiary of Tencent Games, it operates branches in Singapore, Montréal, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chengdu, and Sh ...

and published in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

Tencent Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese Multinational corporation, multinational technology Conglomerate (company), conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimed ...

. The game has an

augmented reality Augmented reality (AR), also known as mixed reality (MR), is a technology that overlays real-time 3D computer graphics, 3D-rendered computer graphics onto a portion of the real world through a display, such as a handheld device or head-mounted ...

mode, similar to other contemporaneous geolocation-based games. Let's Hunt Monsters has often been labelled a clone of ''

Pokémon Go ''Pokémon Go'' (stylized as ''Pokémon GO'') is a 2016 augmented reality (AR) mobile game originally developed and published by Niantic in collaboration with Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for iOS and Android devices. It uses mobile devic ...

'' due to similarities. The game is centered around catching digital creatures based on

Chinese mythology Chinese mythology () is mythology that has been passed down in oral form or recorded in literature throughout the area now known as Greater China. Chinese mythology encompasses a diverse array of myths derived from regional and cultural tradit ...

Gameplay

''Let's Hunt Monsters'' is based on the player's location in the real world, and the game is centered around moving to find and catch in-game creatures, which are based on entities from

. In order to catch the creatures, players use "spirit orbs" that can be tossed onto the creatures. The spirit orbs themselves are obtainable from "Prayer Drums", derived from real-world locations. The game also contains gameplay elements inspired by

massively multiplayer online game A massively multiplayer online game (MMOG or more commonly MMO) is an online video game with a large number of players to interact in the same online game world. MMOs usually feature a huge, persistent world, persistent open world, although t ...

s, such as "bases" for "guilds" where players can build structures. As of April 2019, there were 302 obtainable creatures. The game allows players to trade digital "kittens" through Tencent's

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

platform, a feature which has been compared to ''

CryptoKitties ''CryptoKitties'' is a blockchain game developed by Canadian studio Dapper Labs. The game allows players to buy, sell, and create non-fungible tokens (NFTs) using Ethereum. These NFTs represent virtual cats. The game's popularity in December 2017 ...

''.

Development

Tencent Games announced ''Let's Hunt Monsters'' on 23 April 2018, and included in the announcement that the game would enter testing in

Chengdu Chengdu; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: ; Chinese postal romanization, previously Romanization of Chinese, romanized as Chengtu. is the capital city of the Chinese province of Sichuan. With a ...

in early May of that year. It was released for the Chinese App Stores on 11 April 2019.

Reception

The game has been widely labelled as a clone of ''

'', which was released globally three years earlier, but is not available in China. ''Abacus News'' wrote that ''Pokémon Go'' and ''Let's Hunt Monsters'' "look almost exactly the same", citing similarities in features, mechanics, art style, and user interface. ''Let's Hunt Monsters'' was China's most-downloaded game on the country's

iOS App Store The App Store is an app marketplace developed and maintained by Apple, for mobile apps on its iOS and iPadOS operating systems. The store allows users to browse and download approved apps developed within Apple's iOS SDK. Apps can be download ...

in the month of its release. Sensor Tower estimated that the game had earned more than US$50 million from iOS alone in September 2019, making it at that time the second-highest grossing location-based AR game behind ''Pokémon Go'', which had earned over 25 times as much globally on iOS.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website
(in Chinese) 2019 video games Android (operating system) games Augmented reality games Free-to-play video games IOS games Tencent Location-based games Pervasive games Video game clones Video games developed in China Proprietary cross-platform software Blockchain games TiMi Studio Group games