This is the two hundred eleventh entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred eleventh random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality has unleashed a horde of monster-girl hybrids upon us. It’s MonGirl Tile, by Xexus, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

Fight against cute monster girls in this territory control card game!

That’s right, readers. The monster girls want… to play cards.

MonGirl Tile is a game about having card battles with monster girls. Or MonGirls, for short. Each square card represents a MonGirl, in fact, and has a number on each of its four sides. Players take turns against the computer opponents, choosing one card from their three-card hand to place onto the 5×5 playing grid. If it has a higher number on its side than an adjacent, enemy card does, then that card will be captured and brought under the player’s control. Whoever controls more cards after the full grid has been filled wins the match.

That sounds simple enough, but wrinkles are added to make the card placement more compelling. Enemy cards are placed upside down — by which I mean, rotated 180 degrees — and actually rotate back when captured. This makes it possible to capture several cards at once in a chain reaction. Say a captured card has a “1” on one side, but a “5” on the opposite side. When it’s captured, it flips around, so now that “5” is facing where the “1” used to be. Since there’s another enemy card over there with a “3” on its side, the “5” captures that card too. It then flips over, with the potential to capture yet another card.

Then there are the elements. Every card has a color corresponding to one of five elements, each of which is strong against a different element, and weak against yet another. That can modify the numbers on adjacent cards when placing them. Smart use of elemental cards and careful execution of chain captures can lead to cunning victories. Or at least it should. I had trouble visualizing chains well enough to trigger many of them on purpose, and with only three cards from my deck in my hand at any given time I rarely felt like I could do any long-term planning. I just played whatever card I had that might capture something.

It doesn’t help that the starting decks (there are three, presumably allowing players to create specialized decks for different opponents) are all filled with nearly identical slime girl cards of each element. The first few battles I tried were cakewalks against easy opponents, and I just placed similar cards over and over. To actually create some card variety, players must both win new cards from defeated opponents, and upgrade existing cards by combining duplicates together. But this process seems achingly slow. I had the option of repeating battles against the same opponent over and over to win new cards for upgrades, or facing a boss character whose cards were way better than mine and easily trounced me. So, not really an option at all. And I didn’t relish the grind that seemed to be required to progress.

There’s a framing story for everything, told in visual novel segments, but this didn’t really grab me either. The unnamed protagonist appears to be some sort of wizard who runs a sanctuary for those poor, misunderstood MonGirls, who also happen to be drawn in a slightly sexualized way. The protagonist seemed like a creep, in other words, although I admittedly didn’t get far into the story (some sort of mystery involving MonGirls and demons) so I’m not sure how things turn out. I’m guessing the tale is fairly tame in the end, but it just wasn’t engaging enough to make me want to play through a bunch of repetitive card battles.

The thing is, I suspect there are some players who will really like this. Those who click with the card placement strategy, and who enjoy collecting and upgrading cards, may relish the challenge of besting a boss’ tough deck. MonGirl Tile is clearly a low budget production, with a sometimes confusing interface (it took me a while to figure out how to upgrade cards), but its core card game seems solid enough, for those who don’t mind slowly building up their decks. It’s worth a look for card game fans. If you missed it in the bundle, MonGirl Tile is sold for a minimum price of $2.

That’s 211 down, and only 1530 to go!