Creature Keeper Review (CosmicMishap)
I think this is a game that will have to be played before you can know for yourself if it's worth the price of admission. To be brief: it needs polish in multiple aspects and if you're not alright with that then this game isn't worth paying for at the moment. Check back though, the dev is currently ironing out bugs and adjusting based on player feedback.
Now to NOT be brief: It definitely needs polish in its current state- the menus are a bit of a slog to go through because it's basically all 'd-pad' movement, your main character's name is Blank and I couldn't tell you if that was on purpose or accidental but the way it comes across is , the kick-off for the story comes out of nowhere and you don't get any explanation for the people who basically start your journey for you, the way you catch creatures is not actually so much 'catch' as it is walk up and feed a certain amount of berries (not much a problem for me, but if anyone was expecting something more in depth, that's about as far as it goes), the 'perks' system seems like something you should avoid at all cost since the perk your creature gets has a minus perk that makes it completely not worth it- and these are just the things I've seen this early on. Not to mention for me I spent a while not being able to 'pick up' things because I rebound my buttons for my preferred play style and that prevented me from being able to use that action. A lot of these things can be fixed by the dev, and hopefully they will be! Because underneath all that is I think a perfectly enjoyable game that will probably get frustrating later since you can't control your creature. The writing is so far funny and light, the combat despite what I said feels pretty good, the actual look of the game is quite nice in my opinion, and I'm certainly not yet bored. Like I said before, it'll probably take actually playing it to know if it's worth it to you, and I'm still figuring it out myself, but so far... I'm fine with it. That doesn't mean most people would be.
EDIT: I've finished the game, and can confirm there's more that needs to be polished near the end. That being said, I ran into nothing game-breaking, just general annoyances that make the experience a bit worse than it could be. The gameplay really is simple when you get down to it, there's nothing new really as far as creature collecting goes after the first area, it's just that the creatures are different, and the creatures you use don't seem to matter as long as they're simply powerful creatures. I didn't pay any attention to any of the stats or the elemental weaknesses, I barely messed with the garden for buffing after I got a few set plants to work with, and with my three chosen creatures I steamrolled the end of the game easily. Was it worth the price? For me, yes, I got a solid 12 hours of it, and it wasn't long enough for the simple gameplay loop to get properly boring. But I still can't recommend this game in its current state, as it really does need a lot of polish.