Welcome to Monster Mashup Month on One More Catch, a theme month exploring unique and experimental creature-collecting games. You can read this and three other articles rolling out throughout November for just £2 / $2.50 with the following discount:
Emuurom is filled with things that are hard to spell but easy to love. The first part of that arrangement is solidified by a blocky computer font I find almost impossible to read.
No matter! Emuurom - I’ve got no idea how to pronounce it either - is well worth persevering with. It’s a creature collection game that refuses to clutter itself with combat or fail states. It’s pure exploration and puzzle-solving, so pure in fact that the puzzle-solving often feels like exploration.
Credit: borbware / Coyote Time Publishing
Anyone coming from Pokémon or other creature-collecting games should be delighted by the basic premise. You’re dropped onto a mysterious planet with nothing but a scanning tool. Your job is to scan every plant and every creature you see, and then use what you’ve learned by scanning them in order to progress through the game’s many 2D flip-screen environments.
Except I’m already going wrong, because you’re hardly just using these plants and creatures. Rather, the more you learn about all of them, the more you are able to - well, it feels like you’re genuinely collaborating.