Animon Stories, Adventures with Strange critters!
When am I gonna get my digivolution into Indie TTRPG of the Month?
Genre: Shonen, Mon Catcher (kinda)
Touchstones: Digimon, their new expansion seems to be pokemon themed
What is this game?: Animon Stories is about kids and their monsters exploring a strange and mysterious world
How's the gameplay?: Animon works on a system where players have to roll multiple D6 and count how many results of 4 or more they've rolled, then check the amount of 4+s they rolled against the task's difficulty, the amount of D6s is based on Traits and Talents, Talents are the abstract terms that represent specialized knowledges like academics, sports skills, juggling, etc, while Traits are less abstract numeric abilities, specifically Reflex (Physical aptitude), Logic (smarts), and Spirit (Willpower and Charisma), Kids are defined by their playbooks which show which role they'll take in the story, a brainiac, a jock, an older kid, a rich kid, etc, kids also get Bonds (which represent how close they are to their critter), and a Virtue (a positive quality they embody, think the crests from Digimon Adventure). Meanwhile, Animons are a different story, creating an animon is a whole thing, but the main things are Classification (what their design most resembles, demons are Infernal class, ghosts are Nightmare class, flowers are Plant class, etc), a Type (there's 3 individual type advantage triangles that don't interact at all, they're pretty simple to memorize), Nature (their personality, always has an upside and a downside), Base Stats (self explanatory), Qualities (physical traits that give them advantages), and a Signature Attack, Animons will also evolve throughout the campaign gaining new qualities, so don't sweat your first quality too much!
What's the setting (If any) like?: The setting isn't hard-set, but there's 3 universal constants: 1: Animon are intelligent and can speak to humans just fine 2: Animon can evolve into stronger (but temporary) forms with the power of friendship 3: Animon are not from this world, but an interdimensional other otherwise, everything is for the players and GM to decide!
What's the tone?: Well, its digimon, its cute, kid friendly, hopeful fun! That's not to say darker stories aren't possible, those who have played Digimon Survivors know that Digimon stories can get quite dark! but overall, its fun all around
Session length: Animon is not a particularly complex game, so 1-2 hours is realistic
Number of Players: 4-6 is recommended
Malleability: Animon's lack of setting mean that as long as you're willing to abide by the baseline rules it has, you can run any number of stories in it, the focus on child characters might also be restrictive but honestly the only thing aging up the cast would do is make two of the playbooks feel a bit weird
Resources: Foundry VTT has an add-on for Animon, so i'm sure you could find a sheet on Roll20, there's also form fillable sheets and a book coming out that focuses more on catching multiple animon instead of just one
the vibes of Digimon are usually less popular than Pokemon, since Pokemon is by far the more popular franchise, but if you're willing to go outside your comfort zone for a little bit, Animon is a great game to replicate the vibes of early Digimon, even if it falls short in a few places