DLCMonster Sanctuary - Monster JournalLoading store offers
Monster Sanctuary
The confirmed tracked low makes this a compelling moment to pick up Monster Sanctuary if collecting creatures and shaping a battle team is your kind of adventure. Its exploration mixes platforming and environmental puzzles with monster abilities. At ≈ $2.28 from 
Kinguin, you get a game that brings collection, team strategy, and online PvP together.
On Steam PC, you can play solo or take your trained monsters into online PvP, and full controller support is listed. Supported interface and subtitle languages include English and several others. The current price makes sense for players ready for this particular blend of exploration and tactical monster battles. At $4.99 on Steam, the comparable offer saves you ≈ $2.71.
Loading store offersLoading store offers
Wishlist price
Set a target to receive an email when an eligible offer in your selected region is at or below that amount.
Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $1.752026-07Current Low Across Stores~ $4.39Kinguinvs. Historical Low+151%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Monster Sanctuary
Monster Sanctuary blends monster taming with a side-scrolling Metroidvania world. Explore, solve environmental puzzles, and use monster abilities to cross platforming challenges, then build a team for strategic battles. The Steam PC version includes single-player and online PvP. Steam player reviews are 91% from 10,448 reviews.
Credits
Developer
moi rai games
Publisher
Team17
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$1.752026-07-30 · KinguinBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simplified Chinese | Yes | Yes | — |
| English | Yes | Yes | — |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 6 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Italian | Yes | Yes | — |
| Japanese | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-22
02Before you buy
Exploration and combat
Explore a side-scrolling world, using monster abilities to solve environmental puzzles and navigate precise platforming. Battles reward strategic attack order and team combinations.
Modes and controls
The Steam PC version lists single-player and online PvP, as well as full controller support.
Languages
Listed language support covers interface and subtitles, not full audio. English, German, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese are among the supported languages.
03Frequently asked questions
Does it have PvP?
Yes. The Steam PC version includes online player-versus-player battles.
Are there additional modes?
Yes. Optional Randomizer, Bravery, and Permadeath modes can be enabled and combined.
How many monsters are there?
The description says there are 111 monsters to catch, hatch, evolve, and train.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
This game is totally worth it. If you enjoy the monster-taming formula from games like Pokemon (and others), but wanted it to be a little more “meaty” in terms of strategy, then look no further! Why this game is great: 3 v 3 battles. This makes it so team dynamics are important. Instead of each individual monster needing to be a powerhouse of some sort, you can have monsters focusing on a variety of roles, damage / tanking / buffing / debuffing / etc. Playing around with team compositions is really fun. Every monster has a talent tree with multiple branches. This allows for significant build variety in each monster itself. Depending on the monster in question, you can build them for different roles or a combination of a couple of roles. The fact that there are team-oriented auras (not just for + damage or something, but also cool / unique effects) helps add to the fun of building a good team comp. Every monster is worth using in some fashion. In Pokemon, there are many pokemon which are specifically “inferior” to other pokemon in every objective way, in terms of having lower stats, etc. In Monster Sanctuary, obviously there will be “some monsters which are better than others”, but for the most part, you can look at a monster’s talent tree and go “ok, I see what this one does”. No junk monsters is a big plus for me. Monster Equipment! Yes, each monster gets 1 weapon slot and 3 accessory slots. This allows for further customization of your monster alongside the talent tree. Add in the fact that some monsters have talents which increase stats which they gain from equipment, and choosing how to equip your monster is very important. Yes, there is a crafting system in the game, and you can craft and upgrade your equipment. What about evolution? Monster Sanctuary doesn’t follow the general Pokemon / Digimon formula of “form 1 – 2 – 3”; instead, most monsters don’t have evolutions. The exception is that a few monsters have “evolutions” which you can trigger through special means to change their form. This doesn’t mean that the other form is “100% better”, it’s just different. Example, you can change a fiery caterpillar into a fiery moth. Their movesets are “similar”, but the caterpillar being more defensive / team oriented, while the moth is more offensive-oriented. The big alternative to evolution: Light / Dark shifting. Later in the game you will gain access to light / dark shifted monsters. The difference is that this is the same monster as its base form in terms of talent trees, however, it gains additional stats. The general idea is that Light Shifted will “tend” toward more defensive / team-oriented stats and powers, while Dark Shifted will “tend” toward more offensive / individual stats and powers. Alongside the base stat increase, your monster will gain a cool passive power. Sometimes these can be more simple in nature (like plus percentage of certain stats), other times these will include cool powers (like extra equipment slots, gain shields based on damage the monster inflicts, etc). This mechanic really adds to the fun of “how do I build my monster?” YES! Talent-reset is available! You can experiment with various kinds of builds with your monster and use an item to reset its talent points. A big plus for me—very flexible. Metroidvania-style exploration is done in a decent way. I love a good MV game, which are usually action-games, but in this, only the exploration is done this way, with the battles being turn-based. Like any MV, you’ll find various key items and such to help you explore, with the monsters being huge in that role as they will have an “exploration move” to help fly around / cut vines / activate special switches, etc. It may not be the most complex system, but it works and is fun. Speaking of turn-based battles, during your turn, you can switch between your monsters, so YOU choose who does what move in what order. This leads to high levels of strategy where you can adapt to what’s needed for the immediate situation. MONSTERS AUTO-HEAL AFTER EVERY BATTLE. No need to micromanage your health or waste potions or something, monsters 100% heal and revive after every battle, so play with less time waste and stress! Obtaining new monsters is simple and doesn’t involve a “pokeball” kind of item. All you do is: fight monsters, and if you do well against them (there is a star raking system of 1 to 5 stars based on how efficiently you defeat them) you have a chance to obtain an egg from the monster(s) you fought. Just hatch the egg at the press of a button and voila! You have a new monster. I could go on and on about how great this game is and what features it has, but for a practical note? Try out the demo, see for yourself if you like it, and go from there.Show moreShow less
23.5 hours at review247 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
It was a decent game that gradually became so tedious and annoying that I couldn't finish it. I'm sure that there are plenty who will be happy with this game, but I'm not. I think the best way to summarize why I don't like it is that I felt like my time was being wasted by the Rating for loot system which gives you more or less loot depending on how well you do in an encounter. All of my annoyances boil down to the fact I don't get to see all the game unless I get 5 star ratings. And while I could just look up a guide, having to farm out all the mats/monsters/G is a big no. I don't like the story: I think it's made for kids and is extremely naive. I don't care for the sound design or music: It's just more acceptable than anything. The controls are good for what that's worth. The combat starts off ok, but eventually becomes tedious, grindy and boring. The exploration would be good cause I really like jumping puzzles, but some elements are LOCKED OFF if you don't get 5 star rating on one of the hidden bosses. The collecting would be good except 5 star rating yadda yadda. Seriously, this rating system just did it in for me. I really hate having to 'fit in a box' with a playstyle to please someone. I've been through that phase of my life where games ask me perfection and I'm done with it. This game is too damn juvenile in design and core concept ideas. Too much homogenization and too much gear emphasis. The game just crashed and burned so hard for me right at the end resulting me not being able to finish it while I was in the last area. I just can't. I have zero desire to keep playing this game after finding out I gotta 5 star every major boss monster. I'm not wasting my time looking up guides and recollecting or spending G and farming to finish this game. You ruined it all at the last minute game.Show moreShow less
41.4 hours at review246 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Everyone seems to be able to do Pokemon better than PokemonShow moreShow less
6 hours at review173 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Until I hit my 25th hour mark, I was enjoying the game a fair bit. Collecting monsters, getting the hang of equipments and skill trees of different monsters, trying out a few different combinations, switching out a few monsters from your team because that Ghost-looking thing can Frost everything up and you just need it - probably. The map design isn't necessarily brilliant but it always looks good without too many details who would drown out the feeling of completeness you get just walking, hopping and swimming about. The exploration abilities of monsters work great as an incentive to both catch more monsters and come back to places you've already been and see what you've missed. I've had fun doing just that as well. Sure, some battles with wild monsters were slow, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right? - eventually the exp system works out alright, as long as you don't change monsters in your team too often, you'll get a regular progression that feels natural. Every once in a while, you get to enjoy a battle with another Keeper. It's all fun and games when you start out against 6 blobs. Later on, obviously the other keepers have 6 different monsters in their teams, and you should probably do that as well. Unfortunately, that's really the only thing about teambuilding the storymode will let you comprehend. It will teach you nothing in a natural way about synergies and what kind of synergies are important. Until the 25th hour mark, I thought one of my monster getting two buffs automatically as he came onto the battlefield was OP. How wrong I was. The game has a massive surge in difficulty right at the very end, which left me dazzled and, even as I tried mixing together a truckload of other monsters (I had most of those you get at this point), absolutely mad. I reckon I'm not the most experienced player of JRPGs and for that matter not the sharpest tool in the shed, but I certainly did not expect nor wish for a monster catching game to push me off the cliff and tell me to learn how to fly right before the finish line. The fact that you spend 90% of your time fighting randomly-sorted wild monsters in 3v3 lets you potentially stick to synergies and combos that are not anywhere near sufficient for a 6v6 Keeper battle. Because the first Keeper Battles are still with lower-level monsters, no alarm bell goes off anywhere - even when you lose, once you know the other team, the problem can most likely be solved by putting a different set of 3 monsters forward first. The last Keepers are to me like trying to climb a 3000-foot vertical cliff without ropes, knowing I just spent the last year of my life training for a marathon. I'm stuck down here. I genuinely cannot finish this game now. It requires the kind of involvement I cannot afford for it, and is just plain disappointing in the way it just suddenly took a turn for the worse - I don't even want to finish it anymore. Let the alchemists have their way. They're right anyway, that sanctuary is kinda small.Show moreShow less
32.9 hours at review231 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☑ Easy ☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☑ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second live for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☑ Average ☐ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of ☐ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☑ 8 ☐ 9 ☐ 10Show moreShow less
33.2 hours at review170 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
7/10 - it's alright, but alright games don't really cut it when there are so many awesome indie games you could be playing instead. For some context, I got my team to max level, beat the currently available content, and got most of the hidden power ups. I didn't do any late game minmaxing to try to get as far as possible in the endless challenge. Anyway - why didn't I like this game? I think there are two big reasons. 1. The score mechanic sucks the fun out of the game and 2. The difficulty is extremely inconsistent. Let's talk about the first point - the score mechanic. You get points for: winning the fight quickly, overkilling the enemy, and not taking damage. Basically... if there's any sort of chance you're not going to win, you don't get a good score. It's a tough battle and one of your monsters is knocked out right away? Enjoy getting 1 star. You're fighting tooth and nail? 1 star. You roll in with a completely overleveled set of monsters, just spam your first attack and demolish the entire battle? That deserves a 5 star for sure. The overkill mechanic has no place in the game. It's called monster sanctuary. You shouldn't be rewarded for sadistically using your strongest attack and hoping for a critical hit to completely wipe out an innocent slime with 5% hp left off the face of the planet. I think that really hurts the roleplaying aspect of the battles (which, let me remind you, is like 75% of the game). The other point is damage being penalized. Again, this makes it so that the fights are never close. Just roll with a healer, a buffer, and a dps (that you pick depending on the type of the enemy you're facing) and watch as you steamroll the entire game. And again, this is what the game incentivizes with its score mechanic. This leads me to my second point - the wild encounters are boring, but the trainer battles are disproportionately way too hard. Not only that, but you get zero preparation for them - you can't swap items around, you can't level up the skills of the monsters you've been keeping in your backpack and not using for the last hour, you just get launched into a very difficult battle. Also, the tactics you've been using now no longer work _just because_. Shields? Bad. Healing? Bad. And, because all of your trinkets and equipment is optimized for minimizing time to kill (which, again, is what the game rewards) - all of your monsters basically have 0 defense and get wiped out in one hit from your opponents aoe spam. It's almost not worth talking about anything else - the monster encounters are the majority of this game and I don't think they're done particularly well, so just for that reason alone I wouldn't recommend buying this game. But, to point out some other things - the writing isn't particularly interesting (except for the massive essay dump in the monster encyclopedia that you don't look at until the very end and briefly skim over), the music is very forgettable, the actual overworld, """metroidvania""" mechanics are basically you just waiting to get lucky and hitting that 30% chance you get an earth monster drop so you can activate that earth orb blocking your progress, and finally - there's basically nothing to do with your money. I never felt the need to buy anything, and had 15k gold by the end. Can I see myself ever giving this a positive rating? I suppose it's _possible_ but, man, every part of this game would need to be revamped - better music, better writing, better difficulty ramp, better gameplay mechanics. I just don't see it. Nevertheless - I'll give this one more play once it's officially released, and am willing to revise my review based on the improvements (or lack thereof). I can see potential, but right now I'd avoid it.Show moreShow less
10.9 hours at review222 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
RecommendedSteam player
Is the game worth playing? If you like the idea of a metroidvania with turn based battles with monsters you can train, then YES! This is what really makes this game shine and worth playing, you'll be hard pressed to find anything else like this. The concept is really well done and work much better that i expected, glad i found this hidden gem. Most fights are 3vs3, so having a monster team that works well together is the key to success, this opens many more strategic options. You'll need to think about what each monster can bring to a team and exploit it as best you can! There's many, many ways to go about this due to each monster having a unique skill tree to play with, so even one monster can have many roles. Combine that with the ability to equip each monsters with a weapon and 3 accessories, this gives you many options for customizing your monsters. If you like to min-max in games, then you'll be right at home here. Other thing i really like is no matter what monster you use, even that little blob/slime monster, can still be a force to be reckoned with in the right team, even late in the game. You might be tempted to use the same monsters over the course of the game, you can do that but you'll missing out on potential synergy and unique skills related to each monsters. The metroidvania aspect come in the form of monster skills you can use outside of battles that can be used to open new areas to explore, find secrets and for puzzles. Nothing challenging mind you, the focus is more on training/customizing monsters rather that the platforming aspect. There's also have a infinite arena to really push your team to it's limits and PvP to get...uhhh destroyed in. (Only for the most dedicated players) That's about it, hopefully you can enjoy the game as much as i did.Show moreShow less
292.2 hours at review127 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
I got this game when it first entered early access, since it scratched my Pokemon itch. I could go on for days discussing everything this game does right, and what it does right is quite a lot. However, in a sea of positive reviews, I'd rather not fellate these developers, as the negatives (and they are few) far outweigh everything this game does right. Now that the game is fully released, it appears the developers have created an unnecessarily large difficulty spike at the end of the game. When you search for tips on how to advance this difficulty spike, the developers will have no shame in telling you to join their discord, or to follow one of their reddit guides for help. What they fail to understand is that this unnecessarily punishes players for, what I can only presume to be, egotistic reasons. If your team works perfectly through the entire game, enough so to 5-star all champion monsters, and enough so to steamroll all other keeper battles without losing a single monster, then I would say your team works. The developers would disagree. They'll tell you that you're playing the game wrong, that you have to build a perfectly synergistic team, implying that whatever team has steamrolled the game previously isn't synergistic in the slightest. I seriously cannot fathom what kind of game design influenced this type of decision. Ordinarily, when you have a challenging game where you're expected to lose a lot and refine your strategy, a soft reset exists. I was unable to find any soft reset option here. If you see you're going to lose a keeper battle, you need to painfully wait until you're going to die, or simply close the game. Typically, this isn't an issue, but in Monster Sanctuary, it is. You see, after you lose a keeper battle for the 11th time with your 11th strategy because (and remember), you're playing the game wrong, you get quickly sent back to the previous room. Once you approach the boss battle again.... you need to painfully pass through all the character text ad nauseum. This game is a perfect example of how you can have a fantastic idea, with too many positive qualities to name, but negative qualities that are so severe that it permanently mars the game for a wide range of players. For anyone curious, feel free to make a google search on"Zosimos Monster Sanctuary" to find some problems. As it stands, in this game's current state, I cannot recommend it. I'd request a refund, but I've owned the game for too long and put too many hours into it while it was in early access to qualify.Show moreShow less
25 hours at review212 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
I don't typically buy early access games, especially when I haven't tried them, but I bought Monster Sanctuary on a whim while browsing the store for quarantine games and I was blown away when I realized I spent way more time on it rather than Animal Crossing this week. It's such a pleasurable game in so many aspects, from the Digimon style monster breeding/combat, to the Metroidvania platforming and exploration, I loved every second of it. I'm not going to pretend to be a professional reviewer, I'm just going to say that I think most people would whole heartedly enjoy this game.Show moreShow less
34.2 hours at review116 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Not recommendedSteam player
I'll be honest, when I purchased this game I binged it for 6 hours straight. And it's important to remember that I really enjoyed those 6 hours. This game scratched a few itches, some of which I wasn't even aware of. But then I realized I really hadn't done much in those 6 hours. The combat sequences take a long time and are a majority of the game. As other users have pointed out, the Scoring System is self defeating and doesn't reward players for using some of the complex mechanics that are built into each monster's varrying development. The game rewards fast, quick combat--using supports, tanks, and healers is not as heavily weighted as simply smashing your way through monsters. Boss encounters are more fun and challenging, but punish you for even attempting supportive play to your team. The rest of the game--map exploration--is very basic classic Mario-style jump puzzles. There is a really promising monster ability mechanic that could add a lot more depth to the map puzzles, but it is vastly under utilized. Promising, but a chore to play. It requires a decent time commitment, but doesn't feel very rewarding. Map puzzles are pretty straight forward, but have a bit of a skill cap that may frustrate some players. It lacks real depth to satisfy the urge to play the genres the game is based off of--I ended up just going to play Pokemon and Crash Bandicoot.Show moreShow less
8.1 hours at review179 people found this helpful
Written during Early Access
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.