Studio Aurum, an indie game development studio established in 2016 by founder Jason Walsh, just announced its new creature collecting and turn-based tactical project, Monster Crown: Sin Eater. The studio, which expanded to a team of five following the success of its debut title, Monster Crown, has launched an expansive demo for Sin Eater on Steam alongside a Kickstarter campaign to fund the game’s final development chapter.
The original Monster Crown game came out as a physical copy for Nintendo Switch and Steam in 2021. Players and streamers loved its unique Crossbreeding System that lets you combine monsters in countless ways. We got to talk with Walsh (the game’s creator) and Ahab (director of Sin Eater) about what to expect in the sequel. They also told us about the Kickstarter campaign that offiically launched.
Can you give us an overview of what Monster Crown: Sin Eater is about and how it builds on the foundation of the original Monster Crown?
Ahab: Monster Crown: Sin Eater follows Asur, a young man who has always dreamed of becoming a Monster Tamer. He looks up to his older brother, Dyeus, the most famous and respected Tamer of their time. But after a tragic turn of events, Asur is forced to leave home and begin his journey. Along the way, he clashes with the Beastman Corps (grotesque hybrids of man and monster) and the Four Heavenly Kings, superhuman rulers who govern the Crown Nation in place of Taishakuten, the mysterious Lord Regent. Taishakuten resides atop the impossibly tall Meru Spire at the heart of the nation.
In both narrative and gameplay, Sin Eater boils down on the first game’s essence and expands it into something bigger and better. The narrative is approachable to both returning fans and new players. I truly believe its themes, and the eccentric, larger-than-life characters, will resonate with all kinds of players. I would venture to say that it’s biblical in its scale and poses some fundamental questions about the genre it belongs to at the same time.
We held nothing back in refining Monster Crown, defining it, perfecting it, and then pushing it to its absolute limit. I can confidently say that what we’re doing here is unlike anything else out there.
How has your experience of developing the first Monster Crown influenced the direction of this sequel?
Jason: Monster Crown was my first game. We were also lucky enough to have a lot of people take interest early on. The game’s quick popularity and growing fanbase was not something I was prepared for, and the project I imagined would be considered beyond the scope of a single developer by most anyone. Creating unique hybrids for every monster was an immense undertaking, so was the sprawling world and various secrets were a significant workload (including a whole secret second continent). I became quite ill during Monster Crown’s development and now have a disability.
Even our harshest critiques seemed to agree that Monster Crown had something special bubbling beneath the surface, it just had to be refined and made more accessible. Looking back on that whole saga of my life, it was clear how to address the lacking aspects of the first project. Thanks to the success of the first game, we had the funds to hire a dedicated team, each with an expertise in programming, art, music, or story-writing. All of these wonderful new team members just “get” Monster Crown at its core.
The top (and really only) priority for us this time around is to make the best Monster Crown game, make it as polished as possible, and leave nothing up to chance for fans. Ensuring we had a demo that will prove to fans that this is a serious upgrade removes the need for anyone to just blindly trust us. Give Sin Eater’s demo a spin on the 25th and you’ll be hooked; no one breeds just one monster, after you see one crossbreed creation you’re going to make 20 more immediately after!
The Kickstarter for Sin Eater launched on March 25, what can backers expect from the campaign in terms of rewards, stretch goals, or exclusive content?
Jason: At the heart of Monster Crown lies “responsive depth”, the more you experiment and unleash your creativity, the more the game rewards you with content, challenges, and discoveries. This core philosophy remains stronger than ever in Sin Eater.
Our Kickstarter stretch goals include:
- Free expansions for all players
- Exciting new challenges for veterans and newcomers
- Custom playthrough options (including special codes to begin your adventure with a monster of your choice)
- Unique “Design an Attack” and “Design a Tamer” tiers that let fans directly shape the game
Imagine players worldwide facing your custom creations, complete with your name attached! Monster Crown’s unparalleled depth comes from true individuality: you control every aspect of your team’s appearance, colors, abilities, and moves. These aren’t just static species templates.
After completely revamping the battle system (our beta testers are already breeding incredibly powerful new monsters), we’re excited to include ranked online multiplayer as a stretch goal. This is particularly meaningful because while Monster Crown 1’s combat didn’t meet our standards, Ahab has transformed it into a brilliantly strategic system. Combined with our crossbreeding mechanics, you’ll never know what terrifying combinations your opponents might throw out mid-battle!
The original Kickstarter raised $45,000, which you described as feeling like “winning $1 million” What are your funding goals this time, and how will the funds be used to elevate Sin Eater?
Jason: I’m glad you mentioned that. The campaign in 2018 for the first Monster Crown was beyond measure in excitement for me. The feeling of people believing in my dream project, the chance to really make it real blew me out of the water. As a first time dev, our goal was 10% of what we ended up raising and I really didn’t have perspective on completing a game and the amount of art and design upgrades we’d use those funds for; it was also just me working on the game, so I didn’t need to pay myself anything.
The first game ended up doing quite well, enough to fund a dedicated team for two years, some of them doing this full-time. While I’m really proud to have invested the profits back into Monster Crown, we now need a bit of help to complete the last 5-7 months of development.
This incredible team is definitely doing this for a great rate because we all believe in the project, and we are all friends and just love working together. Our meetings each week are a blast and we’re always having fun shaping this new pinnacle for Monster Crown. If we secure the funding for this final chapter of development, we’re aiming to continue to create new Monster Crown games for our fans, each exceeding their expectations from the last.
What’s one thing you’d say to convince someone hesitant about backing Sin Eater to join the Kickstarter?
Ahab: Give the demo a try. It’s free, a few hundred megabytes and it runs great on low-spec machines. If you’re just breezing through to see what’s what, you’ll get a few hours of awesome, free monster-taming content, but if you’re a hardcore player – you’ll get a lot more.
Jason: We’re at a point where we’re ready to let the results speak for themselves. I know what we’ve got cooking is something truly special, so if someone asked why to join, ideally, I’d just step aside and let them sit at my PC. I know they’ll love what they see.
The original Monster Crown was praised for its robust crossbreeding system. How is this mechanic evolving in Sin Eater?
Ahab: In the original game, interacting with the Crossbreeding System was basically entirely optional, and you could only do it at one location. In Sin Eater, it’s a key part of how you’ll play. Monsters are balanced such that, generally speaking, you’ll encounter monsters that have good moves but not so great stats, or good stats but not so great moves.
You’re meant to put these creatures together like building blocks, think about what you’re doing and construct a team that’ll take you to the top. Every major city in Sin Eater features a Breeding Barn, where you can breed monsters and even fuse monsters (which has its own mechanical implications now), so you’re never too far away from the facilities. If you’re good at the game, you can even build your own facilities at your home to have even more direct access.
In addition to the standard carryovers from the first game, we’ve implemented our own take on “Abilities” – Positive Traits and Negative Traits for every species, which are inherited by the offspring. This means Players will have to think tactically about how they’re going to breed Monsters to mitigate the negative trait while taking full advantage of their favorite positive traits. Our playtesters have already gotten many hours out of trying to break the system!
Are there new monster types, regions, or gameplay systems that fans can look forward to in this sequel?
Ahab: Monster Crown: Sin Eater takes place in The Crown Nation, a brand new region that has similarities to the first game’s Crown Island but has a geography, history and culture all its own (along with many new monsters to encounter). A big part of the game’s mystery for returning players will be things like, “Huh, I wonder why that thing from the first game is back here?” and so on, for new players, its an entirely novel experience.
The core five types remain intact as a simple interaction chain so we focused instead on making elements clearer for players and building systems around the types as a simple gameplay core with a tremendous amount of depth if you get tricky with it! With the new level of depth to the battle system we also have more push and pull with debuffs and status conditions, so battles are layered, multi-faceted and extremely fast paced.
The first Monster Crown faced delays due to underestimating the polish needed. How are you approaching development timelines and quality assurance for Sin Eater?
Jason: There were some surprise issues that popped up during the first game’s development. First off, the project began as something quite humble, a very simple project that was more of a “tech demo” for a breeding system I came up with. After the Kickstarter’s success, things changed. I realized this game had the potential to be a large, expansive and high quality indie game.
The Kickstarter funding allowed me to hire professional artists to improve visual elements that I had previously created alone, this naturally expanded the game’s scope. We also committed to greatly expanding the open world, which further increased our ambitions. On a personal note, during the first game’s development I developed a serious illness that left me with ongoing physical challenges I still manage daily.
For Sin Eater, everything changed from day one:
- We started with a full dedicated team
- Established clear quality standards immediately
- Applied hard-won lessons about organization and production
The demo represents a true vertical slice, the Kickstarter funds will simply let us maintain this quality through completion. Regardless of campaign results, our development timeline and quality standards won’t be compromised.
We’ve also significantly improved our testing process:
- 5x more internal testers than before
- Ran a private beta weeks before the demo launch
- Conducted a 50-person stress test (including lucky fans, creators, and our inner circle) to push the game to its limits
This time, we’re operating as a proper studio, every decision reflects our serious commitment to delivering Monster Crown: Sin Eater as a polished, complete experience.
Beyond the Kickstarter, what’s your vision for Monster Crown: Sin Eater in terms of release platforms and post-launch support?
Jason: Monster Crown: Sin Eater is our most focused project yet. We’ve made strategic cuts to our platform targets and localization plans to concentrate solely on Steam and Nintendo Switch. If the game succeeds, we’ll explore partners for additional ports or translations. With the first game, we overextended ourselves – underestimating how complex porting and localization really are. While many companies can handle those tasks, only we can create Monster Crown, so we’re playing to our strengths!
Our Kickstarter stretch goals include free expansions, ideas we’re already excited about and have clear visions for. But our priority is delivering an incredibly strong core game first: something truly fun and polished. Like any passionate indie devs, we’re bursting with ideas for extra content, but we’re keeping ourselves disciplined until we nail the main experience. After that… well, we might just go crazy with creativity!
As a studio, our mantra is “Focus.” That single word is guiding every decision, and I know it’s the path to success.
Hrvatski 
English (UK)