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"You start with a monster that is small and weak. Your job: Raise and train the monster to battle and best your friends' monsters. \nFor those coming of age in the late '90s, this role-playing game sequence brings to mind the Pok\u00E9mon franchise; the Facebook generation may instead come to associate the monster RPG with MinoMonsters.\nMinoMonsters is a Y Combinator social game upstart founded by teenagers Josh Buckley and Tyler Diaz, 19 and 17 respectively. The duo view their monster machination as a modern-day version of Pok\u00E9mon, primed to eat Zynga's lunch with the emotional engagement of an RPG and the casual appeal of a social game.\n\"Zynga, I think we can all agree, is fairly good at social games,\" Buckley said to a packed house at Y Combinator's Demo Day in Mountain View, California. \"But, what they don't focus on is emotional engagement. You're not going to find kids this Christmas begging their parents for a CityVille plush toy. Pok\u00E9mon, on the other hand, could sell anything with their name on it at the start of the decade.\"\nBuckley and Diaz are Y Combinator's youngest founders ever. Buckley has an impressive pedigree for a teen, having sold his first virtual world company when he was just 15. Together, the pair appear to have a solid grasp on the gaming space and hope to have found a formula \u2014 social gaming + emotional engagement = MinoMonsters \u2014 that will make Pok\u00E9mon's $24 billion franchise seem miniscule.\nAs for the MinoMonsters game itself, it lives in Facebook and tasks players to choose a monster, teach it skills, take it on adventures, progress to higher levels and grow a clan by battling other monsters. \nIt could easily become addicting for social gamers \u2014 though this reporter in particular, who admittedly never glommed on to the Pok\u00E9mon movement, is not exactly hooked. Perhaps I'm in the minority \u2014 the four-week-old game now has more than 110,000 players and is experiencing 10% growth each day, says Buckley.\nMinoMonsters gamers can expect Android and iPhone applications for mobile game play in the near future. Plus, the startup is talking to investors and hopes to secure $1 million in funding, a round that will likely fuel more rapid developments.\nImage courtesy of joshbuckley.net"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2011/03/22/minomonsters/>