A Discussion With Netmarble Founder And CEO Ken Kim About MONGIL: Star Dive

If you missed the news, Netmarble recently announced an official launch date for the upcoming free-to-play monster taming game MONGIL: Star Dive. Prior to that announcement, we were offered the opportunity to talk with Netmarble Monster founder and CEO, Ken Kim, about the game. He and his team kindly answered some of my sillier questions about the game. A veteran game developer, Kim has been working in the game industry for over two decades, having founded both Netmarble Monster (originally Seed9 Entertainment) in 2000.

In that time, Kim has overseen titles like T.O.M.A.K., Save the Earth Again, and Marvel Future Fight, as well as MONGIL: Star Dive’s predecessor, Monster Taming. Currently, he and the Netmarble team are preparing for the launch of MONGIL: Star Dive and EVILBANE.

During our call, which included other members of the team, we discussed MONGIL: Star Dive and its production. Kim noted that the action RPG game has been in development for over 5 years with a team of over 125 people. It’s a sequel to a mobile game, simply titled Monster Taming. Many of you will have some familiarity with MONGIL: Star Dive, even if it’s just through the trailers and other news we post here on MMOBomb.

Nyanners and Monsterlings

And that means you’re probably familiar with the game’s mascot, a rather round black cat named Nyanners. Nyanners, like the other creatures you’ll run into in this game, is technically a monster. That said, Nyanners is built differently. Rather than being a creature you have to fight and capture, Nyanners is an important part of the creature collection process. We’re talking about a cat that swallows the soul of a defeated creature whole and eventually “poops” it out as a “monsterling” that players can assign to characters.

The monsterlings are worn as accessories like keychains and supply the characters with buffs. As Kim explained to me, monsterlings can also be summoned by activating the link chain. At launch, there will be about 165 monsterlings available in the game, with most creatures found in the wild being tameable. However, not all of the creatures players will be using are obtained by being tamed.

Some can only be obtained by combining two tamed monsters. That’s something players will want to do for two reasons. First, combined monsters have bonus features and stats. Second, it’s the only way to completely fill out the monsterling chain. Each character’s monsterling chain has three slots. Two of those are filled by tamed monsterlings, but the third has to be a combined monsterling.

Of course, talking about Nyanners made me wonder one very important thing. How did they come up with a cat that swallows monsters Kirby-style and converts them into monsterlings? The short answer is that the studio has a lot of cat owners.

The longer answer is that during the creation process, leadership was discussing how to make the little guy memorable. One night, they had a gathering over drinks, and one of the cat owners suggested having Nyanners eat a monster soul and poop out “something shiny”. As a cat owner, I can relate. We’d all love our felines to contribute a bit more. But we’ll just have to be happy with them looking adorable and being soft unless we’re talking about Nyanners. That kitty has a job to do.

The World of MONGIL: Star Dive

As for the game’s universe, players will start their journey in the European-inspired city of Hananis. This is where the main duo, Cloud and Verna, will meet their initial adventuring companions. Kim explained that the game will move into an area inspired by medieval Korea in the game’s next chapter, so players can expect some variety fairly soon.

Knowing that the next zone is inspired by Korea, I inquired as to whether they would be using this to showcase elements of Korean culture that Western players may not be familiar with. I was told that, as Netmarble is “really good at localization” and the company doesn’t want to force players to do things like “study unfamiliar names”, they’re making everything easy to understand. Players can expect it to be “exotic but really attractive”.

Playtime and Content Cadence

I inquired as to how many hours of playtime players can expect from the MSQ at launch and was told about 20 hours. Kim went on to note that for those looking to do everything, it will take a lot longer. Players can also expect an update cadence of around six weeks. That said, Kim added that content updates will take place about every six weeks, while players can expect updates every three weeks for other things.

This cadence is based on market research as to what works best for casual players (and won’t kill the dev team). Still, they will keep an eye on things to make sure it’s what works best for their players. That said, most games of this type do tend to stick to a six-week cadence, or in some cases, split content updates so that you effectively get half the update on the third week and the other half on the sixth. So it’s a somewhat proven method at this point.

Playable Characters

As this is a gacha game, I did ask about playable characters. Currently, there are eighteen characters in the build. Some are from the starting region, while others will appear in the next. For those wondering about male characters, and yes, there will be husbands available. Kim pointed out that there are several “attractive” males for players to collect. Granted, I was mostly shown the men with more muscles, so I’m not sure what your twink-to-buff guy ratio will be.

Improvements Since Testing

Finally, since the game has been through a few tests at this point, if there were any significant changes, they’d like players who participated in them to know about. Kim’s response was that since the game is available on “many platforms,” there’s “no magic button to satisfy everyone” when it comes to combat and the like.

That said, the team “put a lot of time and effort into balancing the difficulty level to find the best spot to satisfy everyone from different levels”. He goes on to say that they “already know what they had was strong” and that the objective is for the game to be more casual, "to approach a larger audience” while offering the “best combat experience for everyone, including mobile players who are already at a disadvantage”. Beta players should be able to notice a difference in the game’s appearance as well, since they’ve done quite a bit of work on the shader program.