This idea was part of the 2025 game jam ideas project.

Monster Guess Who - Field Guide Game

One Liner: 'Guess who' of monsters

Cryptids Book

There is a large book of cryptids, monsters, urban legends that involve creatures, and other mythical beasts. Each cryptid has a photo, some stats (size, habitat, etc…), and a small description. (Think monster manual from DND). It should have the feel of a scientific field guide to magical creatures. Each cryptid should take up half a page. The book should have at least ~100 creatures.

This book should be beautiful to look at though. People should want to buy this game for this book alone.

This game could be played with ANY field guide including birds or plants. It could be used as a teaching guide instead of flash cards. Our monster manual has the stats well balanced between all the categories and a good index, and other helpful information.

Game play

Each player rolls a percentage dice (2x D10) and uses the index to select their creature (eg. Rolled 35, look up what the 35th creature is in the book). They take the book and read about their monster.

Each player in turn asks Yes or No questions (20 questions style) of the other players and uses this information to try and guess what monster they are. Specifically they ask a question, get an answer, then make a guess before the next person does the same.

Both players can share the same book, and there is a chance that both players are the same monster.

Future expansions could explore other types of monsters.

Questions might include

  • "Is your creature carnivorous?"
  • "Does your creature have wings?"
  • "Does it appear in forests?"
  • "Is it taller than a human?"

Math

If there are 100 monsters.

Each monster has 5 stats with 5 possible answers per stat.

If the book is balanced where each monster is evenly distributed, stats for each of the possible answers (artificially balanced) and the players are able to remove 20% each question (1/5). Then they should be able to get it in 7 questions.

There is a low chance that people will be able to divide the population by 1/5 (20%) each time. It will take closer to 18-25 questions. But because they have to guess every time there is a random chance that they might guess it earlier.

Online version

This could easily be made into a neural net style http://20q.net/ style game. Where they could play single player just trying to guess the monster.