Quazi Fahian Muntakim (aka Priom), an indie game developer from Bangladesh and the founder and lead developer of HatCatGames, is all set to launch “PiMon,” his very first game on Steam. Inspired by classics like Digimon, Pokémon, and Tamagotchi, PiMon is a virtual pet simulation game that falls under Steam tags like creature collector, idle, and simulation.
The pets in the game are referred to as PiMon. It is the player’s responsibility to care for and bond with their PiMon while doing other tasks on their PCs. You can train your virtual friends, update them into new and evolved forms, and even raise PiMon together to battle with other players. The game is built in a way that allows you to pin a small floating window to any part of your screen, thus making it a customisable idle game, perfect for some breaks in between work.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Esports, Priom talked about the journey behind developing PiMon, from sound design to sprite art and animation. According to him, PiMon was drawn, developed, coded, and dreamt up by Priom himself, with his brother lending help on the Steam thumbnail art and some character designing, while streamer Makoiibee and editor Rakibuzzaman Mahdi chipped in to help with the game’s announcement trailer.
Speaking about the technical side of things, Priom told The Daily Esports, “I used Inkscape as the general art and sprite tool. I designed every PiMon in the game because I strongly believe the design and appeal of these creatures will decide if the game is received positively or not.”
He continued, “I chose Game Maker Studio (GMS) 1.4 as the game engine. One of the main things in the coding and development stage was that I had to make sure the game could “draw over” other apps on Windows, like YouTube’s picture-in-picture feature, as the whole point of the game is that your PiMon lives in a small corner of your PC while you do other things. I had to mess with Windows APIs to get that to work which I was not used to before.”
The game’s audio and music design was also done by Priom, who used the DAW 1bitdragon and Audacity to bring everything to life.
When asked about his inspiration behind creating PiMon, Priom said, “I initially wanted to release a full-scale RPG for my first big Steam project. But that’s quite risky for a small indie dev. I just finished my MBA recently so I thought I would try getting a game out within the span of a year. My love for Japanese franchises with cute collectible critters, plus my desire to have an idle widget game of sorts while I worked, fueled my wish to create PiMon!”
However, the road to create this game was full of bumps for the developer, including, but not limited to, extraneous circumstances like a house fire, medical crises, etc. Even still, Priom managed to push through. Even Steam’s strict guidelines on game publishing did not faze him much.
“Steam does ask for a lot of information, but I had already experienced a lot of this by releasing jam games and such on itch.io so it wasn’t too daunting,” he shared. “While the upfront 100 USD platform fee can feel intimidating, I ultimately think one should go with the confidence that they will get a lot more than their money’s worth back.”
PiMon’s demo version is already out on Steam, with the full launch set for January 10, 2025. Ahead of the launch, Priom wishes everyone will wishlist the game to support local developers and help with the algorithm.
“If you like franchises such as Digimon, Pokémon, Monster Rancher and Tamagotchi, I’m sure you will find something to love about PiMon,” he said. “If you like cozy idle games, you’ll be in for a treat as well, so I hope you will pick the game out when it releases. I have the utmost love, respect, and fascination for the legacy of games and the star developers and franchises born from them, so I would love to be able to make many games that people love going forward if PiMon is successful!”
Ayaan is the Chief News Editor of The Daily Esports.
