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Hello, today I’ll be going into a deep dive of creatures of sonaria, a mini history lesson of the game, and some of the issue that plaque the game to this day. Note: some of the content of this may be based on personal opinions and as such you are welcome to make your own opinions as well. Also this is not meant to point hate on the game or devs. This is simply an analysis on some of the good and bad apsects of creature survival games utilized in this game and what future game devs can learn from this game.
first, little bit about me amd this post. im a game design student and I love to analyze and study games both good and bad to learn from them. Creature survival games has always had a rocky history both on roblox and outside of roblox. usually being drama related issues or overall design related issues, some of the most popular games in the genre being the Isle, Path of Titans, and of course Creatures of Sonaria. I have recently become fascinated with Roblox games as it’s a unique look into early developers as many game devs from roblox are relatively younger and as such you get a good view into games from smaller teams and how they work despicably from a live game system like roblox. So let’s get started. consider this like one of those video analysis people watch on youtube except you get to read it instead of drawing in the background because we all know we don’t actually watch the person talking the whole time. hopefully, I can be just as entertaining but that’s not really a promise, sorry.
Part 1: COS’s early beginning and ideas: games based on FOMO
so I actually played Creatures of Sonaria (CoS for short) way back from the game was in its early beta testing days. Back then the game was actually not called Sonaria as the dev team had not made Sonar Studios yet. The lead dev of the Game (and at least at the time that I’m aware of is still the lead dev) is a coder and modeler known as Erythia. Erythia and the team, now known as Sonar studios, is more well known for their initial hit game “Dragon Adventures” (DA for short) which is still a very popular and highly rated game on the platfrom. It’s a dragon raising game with lots of customization options. Of course not every dev from that project had a hand in the creation of CoS as both games were still being updated and worked on at the same time.
the earliest mentions of CoA (now CoS) was back in 2019. The earliest the goal for the game was to create a creature survival game while using Gacha game elements (for some who don’t know or are one of the rare few that haven’t heard of a game genshin impact before) Gacha games are essentially a chance based game mechanic where you have a percentage of winning characters or items from a group of prizes each with their own level of rarity. From a roblox perspective this was likely added to help with the appeal and returning interesting of the game. Sonar Studios is not new to how roblox gets players to come back to their games.
one of the biggest hurdles in making a game on roblox is the fact that almost every game is based on a live service concept. This means in order to keep interest, constant updates are a must (and trust me this will be a big deal in CoS development issues but I’ll get into that later). Roblox is very big on devs making profit from the amount of people playing the games and for how long they play at a time. So in order to remain in good profits, many roblox devs are basically forced to make addictive measures like this to get a nice steady profit. Sonar Studios used another method tho that’s just a popularly used by other roblox devs and what later became the biggest downfall (in my opinion) of the games core. FOMO
trading and rarity items/characters is one of those addictive cores of many roblox games. One of the most popular roblox games of all time “Adopt Me” was practically built on the principles of rarity and trading. It’s easy to get hooked on collecting every creature or item in a game and it stems greatly from an instinctual feeling on wanting to not be left out of the crowd that has the cool items. More commonly known by the acronym: FOMO (Fear of Missing out); if you have ever played DA or CoS you have very likely heard the words “it’s my dream *blank*” or “OMG it’s a *blank*“, I’ve always wanted one” These are usually clues of FOMO working as lots of these rare creatures are being seen and used by other players all the time. Trading helps to increase this feeling by giving players a chance to obatin these rare items in way that doesn't feel impossible. You will always see people offering creatures for other creatures and in a way it can promote a healthier form of FOMO by not gatekeeping creature entirely. But it doesn’t really fix the problem as a whole as this can only be used by players as a way to flex even more. But this is less of an issue for DA as its not a gacha like CoS. it’s a bonus feature in DA while in CoS its the core. And this is where the ambition of the game and the initial concept start to run into problems.
CoS suffers the worst from being a gacha game on top of a creature survival because both ideas are extremely taxing to work on separately let alone together. In order to contunue this supply and demand of rarity and creatures, CoS has been pulled into this endless production of Creatures to model and create. They get some help with this by allowing the fans to pitch concepts and designs and pay them in robux for their efforts. But this creates a bit of issues regrading designs and concepts. Obviously not every design is going to be entirety original and while having reference is a good thing, there no denying that some of these designs are in a very dangerous spot for copyrighted issues. Take the Auraron for example when comparing it to a creature from the Monster Hunter video game series: Mizustune
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they both bear a very strong resemblance, both having a similar shape and fins. Now, I don’t think the designer intended to copy mizustune part for part. However it is always important to be careful when designing something based on another creature to not make it too obvious (unless of course you want it to be for the sake of parody but thats very likely not the situation here), you will want to add a fair amount of your own flair in the design, less you catch the eyes of unfortunate lawsuits and copyrighted issues. Of course i don’t think Capcom is keeping their eyes on roblox games so the devs probably don’t care as much, but it is always something to think about. From what I have been told, there’s been a lot more drama related to issues like this in the past with the Sonar Team, I’m here to talk about the game design tho and not drama. Mistakes happen and that’s just a part of growing as a dev and a person, so I’m not going to really discuss it too much here. I just wanted to mention this as it is still a part of the design process that should be discussed as it’s something to be careful of.
Regarding the creatures tho besides this matter, this is by far the most intricate and amazing part of this game. The creatures have beautiful designs and animations especially for a roblox game. I need to give applause where it’s due. Having this many creatures each with their own movement is incredible and it helps to add a sense of variety more than just the designs alone. Seeing how each creature move and interacts is such a fascination. They also do a good job as keeping a consistent theme by resisting creature to fit the style of CoS which is vital in making a creature world fit together. You always want to make sure you creatures look like they belong in a consistent world (unless of course they aren’t suppose to be from the same world). They also due a great job as making the models by utilizing bigger polygons than hundred of timy pieces which helps the models not lag the game horrible. Sometimes it almost looks like a deformed mesh despite being segmented. a lot of that is thanks to have fluid the animations are. from running to swimming to idle, everything is taken into account and it’s clearly an incredible amount of work.
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part 2: the core players of CoS: what is Oasis Syndrome and how do you prevent it?
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let’s step away from all the creatures and collecting and let’s talk about the overall gameplay. As with most creature survival games the core idea is to survive by eating, drinking, hunting, fighting, and growing. Seems simple enough but a lot goes into making this process work because this game is reliant on the players to follow along the rules of the game in order for this concept to work as whole. The games ecosystem is basically ran by the players around you. Sometimes as a dev you have to remember that she making games where you play as wild animals, are basically making Humans think like wild animals and it’s a hard thing to achieve without rule set in place to create this behavior in the gameplay, because obviously humans aren’t wild animals and will not think as such by nature even when the rules are in the form of a fictional game. Which creates the number one biggest issue of any creature survival game and what I like to call “the oasis syndrome”
oasis syndrome is what I believe to be a by product of the natural need to be around other humans. Video games can be a great way to connect to people and hang out and when given a game where you can play as cool animals, sometimes it’s hard to get people to separate and hunt each other when everyone just wants to chat and hang out while showing off and flexing their cool creature. This means players will find a spot in the games map and universally choose it to be the “hang out spot” of the server resulting in ”Oasis Syndrome”. This also means that the players that are suppose to hunt each other will now be chilling in one area and just be “laying around chatting”. Good for a rolepay, not good for a creature survival game. because what happens if a player wants to play the game how it’s meant to be played? Well anyone who has played as a Ken and “just needed some food” know how this goes down. you are labeled as a “KOSER” (Kill on sight player) and attacked by the whole oasis.
So how do you fix this? well some other games ideas like the Isle and Path of Titans was to create different servers with admins that have the ability to enforce these rules, sometimes known as realism servers. But with roblox, unless you own a private server with dev controls you wont be able to do efficiently. Also, these servers have a bad history of admins abusing their powers. Sonar has had a few different ideas in the past to fix this issue but haven’t managed to fully fix the problem yet. At first they added an uncomfortably meter that would add debuffs the longer you were around other members not in your pack. But players simply ignored this and would leave and come right back. Another idea was to make forced situations like tornados that forced players out, but that didn’t work either as They all came right back. I think a core reason why this is such a big issue for CoS is the other half of the game, the Gacha aspect. Because what is the first thing you want to do when you get a cool new thing? You want to show it off! in order to do that you need to be around other players, so of course, everyone is going to group up. It’s why the Auction area in DA is so popular, because it’s basically a place to show off and get attention and it adds to that FOMO response and satisfaction. so, the big question is…can you fix this? Well, while I don’t think you can fully prevent this, their are someways you can maybe patch the damage, but it’s not gonna be well liked at first.
on way to encourage people to not flock together is to remove features that allow people to gather in the first place. One of the key ways players communicate in game is via global chat. Now I’ve seen roblox games where chat can be toggled to only show up in proximity to your player rather than a global chat and groups can have separate global chats. This was actually used in the Isle recently to help with their form of Oasis syndrome and it did manage to fix a bit of the problems. It helps to make you as a player focus more on yourself rather than communication with other players and adds to the lone survival experience. Another very glaring issue with CoS specifically is how they manage food. For a long time now, the devs have had meat simply spawn from specific areas in intervals. So in the eyes of a carnivorous player, why would they go to hunt if they can just sit here and get food for free? Back in the early days of the games testing, AI players were implemented and although they were a bit broken, they helped keep players moving and encouraged proper exploration for them as they were randomly spawned. Maybe something similar to the Path of Titans form of hunting, where you could find holes that initiated an AI chase could help with those coding issue while improving overall hunting mechanics. It also might be a good idea to encourage players to hunt other players in order to make the game less boring for both sides. Give them a chance to have that incredible rush of adrenaline and exciment because that’s also a way to add replay value and interest in players just as much as cool designs. But that also bring me to my next big point and another reason why gacha and creature survival is a hard thing to put together.
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part 3: balancing and combat: why gacha does and doesn't work in Creature survivals
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when playing a creature survival variety and combat is a big part of the game. You don’t want to see the same creature every time you play because it just gets boring. CoS is by no means shy of this. In fact I’d argue it has the largest roster I’ve ever seen in a creature survival game. And of course this is because it’s a gacha. But as some famous person I can’t remember has said “too much of a good thing can be a bad thing” and this can’t be said more for a creature survival because part of a live service creature survival game is combat. Combat is a tricky part of any creature survival game because you have to balance every creature to work together in a way that doesn’t overpower everyone while still considering the different play styles of each creatures. Why? Well, let me give this example: there is one apex predator in the game. It has insane stats and can kill almost everything in the game, so guess what starts to happen? everyone plays as said creature because no one else can beat said creature and it’s taking over the servers. Suddenly there can be twenty creatures in a game but now only one matters and it quickly becomes boring. There’s no longer variety or interest in a new encounter. You are fighting the same creature as the same creature.
Now sonar has added a ton of different mechanics to combat and also has a tier system implemented in the game to try and help resolve this issue. Bigger creatures become high theirs and other creatures in said tiers are stronger against creatures in said tier. Smaller creatures are usually weaker and as such are usually non carnivorous and are more based on ailments and speed so bigger animals can’t reach them to hurt them. Similar to how it works in an actual ecosystem. The gamba is also used to add variety by making sure not everyone has the same options as another player, which again is a good idea.…what isn’t a good idea was also making stat increasing items in a gacha a feature. Yes, that’s right…it’s time to talk about plushies.
the Plushie mechanic in my opinion is the biggest example of pay to win in CoS. the plushies we’re a recent addition that gives stat additions to players and can be won in gachas or in event shops. Sometimes the stats are minimal and aren’t harmful enough to do too much damage such as slight hunger reduction and maybe a bit of a speed boost when ambushing. Just a nice simple way to add some variety in creatures to shake up encounters by the individual rather than just the species. But then there’s the breath plushies. Breath is a very deadly mechanic in the game, typically used by fliers and one of the only forms of ranged combat in the game, there are different forms of breath like fire, blindness, slowness, poison, and more. obviously, because these breath are so powerful, you can only use it for so long without taking damage and only a select numbers of creatures get it...UNLESS you have plushy that gives you said power. Now, suddenly a creature that was built around certain stats is given more power than they are originally allowed and the balance is thrown out the windows. This is how we get situations like groups of creatures who mess with players by getting a ridiculous amount of breath. What makes this even worse is that you have to pay a hefty amount to get these items which creates a pay to win situation as you can get more money to buy these items by paying. And it’s not like these plushies go away after one use. They are a permanent item that you can buy as much a you want. the idea of plushies as a fun way to add a tiny percent bonus was a neat idea. But the breath plushies as a concept is very flawed and messes up a lot of the games balancing This is vital to encourage players to have fun.
but that’s of course expecting all of the game to be perfectly balance which is nearly impossible and that because this game is a gacha. As I stated earlier this game has the largest variety of creatures I’ve ever seen in a creature survival game and there is a reason why. when adding a new creature, you have to consider how it plays with every other creature, this means testing it and making sure that it doesn’t overpower or cause imbalances before it goe out and even after it’s publicly available. CoS doesn't have that luxury because its constantly churning out new Charcters monthly sometimes even weekly. Even if you test these creatures in a testing room, it’s gotten to the point now that you cannot test it with every single creature in the game to see how it balances. the tier system is carrying a lot of the weight but the tiers are only meant for base stats, they don’t take into account special abilities. In order to satiate the constant churn of new creature, new abilities are added to make creature more interesting and more valuable, and similar to plushies this creates a massive imbalance if not properly handles. there also the issue that these probables haven’t been found yet because of the “oasis syndrome” we haven’t been able to test these stats in proper survival game measures because the game rarely is played by actual survival game Rules in public servers. Honeslty I don’t know you would even go about fixing this because this comes from the biggest issue with CoS as a whole, the Updates.
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Part 4: Quantity over Quality: when too much is not enough
when I talk to people about CoS, I don’t always hear about the cool creatures and gameplay. I hear a lot more about the bugs and crashes and optimization issues with the game. These issues were apparent from even early on in the game. some have existed for months and even years. Which is a bit of a surprise coming from how polished DA was in terms of mechanics and gameplay. Thats becaus a lot of DA’s early days was polishing the game and working out bugs and mechanics. It was only until recently that the rarity systems because I bigger deal in DA. CoS on the other hand seemed more worried about the gacha over the main game. After all, it’s what they use to bank on the interest and value on the game. There is about three to four new creatures each month in this game, but rarely are there any mentions of core gameplay additions. There was a recode mention per but it’s so long ago that I wonder if any of it is getting done because if how much time is being taken up by all the creatures being made. I hope I’m wrong tho. Game development takes a long time, but I haven’t seen anything to really show they are putting anything into that. I don’t think any of the devs will ever see this post but I’d they do I just want to say that it’s okay to take break, this constant flow of demand will never stop, but if you keep adding to that denand nothing changes. a game with issues will always be a game with issues even with a fancy new creatures, and eventually people are going realize that. a circle like this only keeps its value for so long. but Making something fun, something that people come back to just because they love to play It. It means so much more than that one rare creature that was cool for a few days.
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well, we have reached the end of this discussion. I’d like to once again add that this is coming from a place of love for the game and is no way meant to bash or hurt the devs. I wouldn’t make this post talking about the problems if it wasn't from a place of genuine love for the game. I want this game to be better that it is. I want to see it grow and become something good. But right now it’s just not there yet, but it has the potential. I also hope this was a neat little adventure for people just reading this for fun. I hope this gives you ideas for your own games. anytime you make a game you should always do research. Learn from other games, see what works and doesn’t. Maybe someday you’ll make a hit game of your own. I know this was a fair bit of writing (there is probably more typos than I can’t count) but this is something I’ve wanted to do for a while. and if you did somehow read all this, first off you must be great with books XD, but also, thank you.