Review - LumenTale: Memories of Trey, the new monster taming game

LumenTale: Memories of Trey is a monster-collecting RPG where you play as Trey, a boy who has lost his memories, as he explores the region of Talea and captures creatures called Animon. To move forward, Trey decides to revive and become the captain of his hometown's long-inactive Animon battle team, aiming to compete in tournaments across the globe.

The classic protagonist with amnesia trope works surprisingly well here!

Game Overview

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, Steam (PC)

Release Date: May 26, 2026

Developer: Beehive Studios

Publisher: Team17

Official Trailer

Right from the start, LumenTale features a prominent story with plenty of dialogue, and it is visually gorgeous. As you get used to the flow, the game introduces new elements and mechanics gradually, keeping you from feeling overwhelmed by a sudden massive info dump.

Small unexpected twists and the necessity of battles are present from the very beginning, which kept me excited to see more of the game and how it works rather than getting bored.

You can tell right away that the game was made with a lot of love, and the art style truly reinforces that.

To make this review easier to read, I have broken it down into specific sections:

Elements, Attributes, and Scanning

Animon are mystical creatures that inhabit the universe of LumenTale. They are formed from the special energy flowing through the world, though not much else is known about their origin. Humans have studied them since ancient times, motivated by a remarkable trait shared by all Animon: they can influence emotions and interact directly with the soul of living beings.

There is actually a personality quiz at the start that determines which starter Animon best matches your style. Here are the 5 starters:

Animon possesses 13 fundamental elements, split between 12 classic natural elements and a 13th mystic/synthetic element called Virus, which blends with the others.

Below is an image showing the 13 elements and their functions:

Beyond the fact that each Animon type has specific strengths and weaknesses against other elements (which you can easily check with the scan tool so you do not have to memorize everything), the Attribute system adds another layer of depth to your attacks. By spending an extra energy point when attacking, you can activate your Animon's specific attribute.

This makes battles much more strategic than simply attacking without a plan. Resources in battle are scarce, meaning you must carefully map out your steps and manage your energy pool each turn.

The scan system relies on a compelling trade-off: it forces you to spend a turn gathering information, or you can choose to attack blindly and risk your move being completely ineffective or dealing barely any damage. This makes thorough exploration essential before facing leaders and Lumens, ensuring you already know their Animon's strengths and weaknesses beforehand. Since Lumen bosses use highly trained Animon, wasting turns scanning during the actual fight would be too risky.

Furthermore, the game displays icons right on the battle screen when hovering over your Animon's available moves, indicating whether the enemy is weak, neutral, or resistant to them. This makes quick decisions during battle effortless without requiring any tedious memorization.

Kudos to the user interface design.

Combat

Combat is where the game truly shines and sets itself apart from Pokémon by being significantly more complex and strategic:

Battles feature up to 4 Animon on the field at the same time for each side. This creates great opportunities for area-of-effect (AoE) attacks that hit multiple targets.

However, your entire team shares a single pool of energy orbs each turn (for example, 8 energy orbs to execute moves). A powerful attack might cost 3 orbs; if you manage your resources poorly, you could run out of orbs before all your monsters have a chance to act, forcing you to pass the turn. Consequently, you always need to plan ahead and choose the most efficient attacks.

Additionally, every Animon belongs to one of the 5 attributes mentioned earlier. You can spend 1 extra orb to infuse an attack with attribute power, such as the healing attribute (Felicis), which allows an attack to deal damage to the enemy while simultaneously healing your team.

Another brilliant feature of this system is that if you plan well and manage to land four super-effective attacks in a row, you earn a free extra turn to take any action. This action costs absolutely nothing, allowing you to unleash a massive attack that would otherwise be difficult to deploy.

For me, the combat felt highly dynamic and strategic. The interface does an excellent job of displaying weaknesses and resistances to remind you of your options, which is a feature I often found myself wishing for in older monster-taming games like classic Pokémon titles.

Skills and Stat Points

You can fully customize your skills by swapping them out for other available options, level them up using specific resources, and allocate stat points earned whenever an Animon levels up.

Here you can see how straightforward it is to level up and manage your abilities.

This is the extra stat point distribution screen. If you change your mind, you can reset and remove points you have already allocated for free and place them into a different attribute.

Since certain resources are limited or require heavy grinding, being able to swap skills and reallocate stat points free of charge is a massive quality-of-life feature. It allows you to test out different builds and discover what works best through experimentation. Having the freedom to allocate points, realize the build is not working, and reset to try again without having to start over from scratch with a brand-new creature is incredibly helpful.

Progression and Environment

Early in the game, you can hold down a button to sprint, which makes exploration much smoother. However, it takes a while to unlock faster methods of travel, such as the surf board or fast traveling between Lumen dorms, which only become available much later in the story and feature limited fast travel points.

A central tool in the game is the Holoken, Trey's specialized yo-yo, which features two distinct modes:

- Creature Mode: The primary use for this mode is throwing it at a wild Animon to initiate combat with a pre-emptive strike, dealing early damage (or defeating them instantly if your level is high enough).

More importantly, as you explore different areas, you will encounter obstacles or ledges that are inaccessible at first. By progressing through the main story, you unlock field abilities tied to your Animon that can be channeled through the yo-yo to grant access to new locations. This style of progression is a staple of the genre and is executed very well here.

The only downside is that as you progress and the yo-yo gains elemental properties (such as Earth breaking certain barriers or Light activating fans and revealing hidden paths), you must have an Animon of that specific element in your active team to use the field ability. If you need to use a Plant ability and lack a Plant type in your current party, you have to pause the game, open the menu, access your boxes, swap your creatures, unpause, use the ability, and then repeat the entire process to bring back your original monster.

To make things more difficult, dual-type Animon only count their primary element for these field actions. Balancing this can feel tedious when the game features 13 elements but only gives you 6 slots on your active team.

- Billia Mode (LumenTale's version of a Poké Ball): This mode allows you to catch Animon directly without entering battle by triggering a Quick Time Event reflex minigame. It is incredibly fast-paced and quite difficult, with buttons changing randomly in an order you must hit perfectly.

Personally, I found it much more practical to catch them during standard battles. Missing the inputs in the minigame wastes your resources, and the Animon will likely end up attacking you anyway.

Wild Animon spawns are frequent, ensuring you will never run out of creatures to fight. Even so, grinding for XP can feel slow if your Animon are already at a higher level than the wild encounters in the area.

Speaking of experience points, the recycling system allows you to trade gems and other items for extra XP. Keep an eye out, because different recycling bins offer higher XP yields for specific items, making it well worth checking which bin gives the best return for the item you want to recycle.

This recycling mechanic lets you boost your Animon's experience quickly, serving as an excellent alternative to simply grinding repetitive wild encounters across the map.

The game's soundtrack is pleasant and shifts appropriately during high-stakes moments, complemented by great ambient sound effects that bring the world to life. It can feel a bit repetitive after several hours, but it is never a major issue.

Background audio elements like footsteps, rustling trees, and rushing waterfalls are beautifully crafted. Walking across different terrain types produces distinct sounds, adding depth to the immersion.

The most intriguing audio feature is the chime system. Scattered throughout the world are Lost Animon, which serve as the game's version of shiny variants. A distinct chime sound effect alerts you whenever one is nearby, meaning you need to keep your ears open. If you love hunting for rare variants, you can even mute the music and leave only the SFX turned on while searching, drastically reducing the chances of missing one.

This mechanic is an excellent design choice, letting you know when a rare target is close instead of forcing you to rely purely on random luck or entering every single encounter blind.

Looking at the core battle mechanics and world design, the game functions beautifully. It offers an incredibly pleasant loop where the strategic combat system feels rewarding and tracking down new creatures is highly satisfying. However, after roughly 17 hours of playtime, the core cycle of backtracking through familiar areas to battle without finding new species can start to feel a bit draining. This is a common hurdle for most monster-taming games, as maintaining a constant stream of fresh content is naturally difficult.

If you have already put in 15 hours and fully mastered the mechanics, that is usually the perfect time to take a quick break. Stepping away until the next day does wonders for resetting your brain and staving off gameplay fatigue.

The game blends 3D environments with 2D pixel art for the characters, creating two distinct visual styles that complement each other wonderfully. The game is beautiful, featuring vibrant, lively landscapes. The world design is meticulous and filled with details, including hidden items scattered around that encourage you to pay close attention to your surroundings, especially in new zones.

In many ways, the team-based elements and gorgeous pixel art evoke Sea of Stars, right down to the similar style of the dialogue boxes. Meanwhile, the hybrid 2D/3D approach brings to mind Cassette Beasts, another monster-taming alternative to Pokémon. All of these games share a beautiful art direction that integrates seamlessly with their respective worlds.

The art direction team at Beehive Studios absolutely knocked it out of the park!

Lumen Management Device (LMD)

The LMD serves as LumenTale's version of a Pokédex, acting as your go-to hub for analyzing a wide array of information.

Every time you complete 3 scans on the same species of Animon, you unlock comprehensive data within the AniWiki, revealing their weaknesses, hidden types, evolution paths, and more.

Claiming the Early Adopter Pack

If you purchased the version bundled with the Early Adopter Pack, the rewards will automatically be delivered to your inventory the very first time you boot up the LMD, which becomes accessible right after finishing the prologue.

- Dynamic and deeply strategic combat;

- Clean, intuitive, and highly functional UI;

- Effortless skill customization and stat reallocation;

- Beautiful and vibrant Animon designs, even if none stand out as uniquely iconic;

- Accessible audio cue system for tracking down rare Lost Animon.

- Mandatory swapping of specific elemental monsters to use Holoken field abilities;

- Catching mechanics via Billia Mode's minigame can feel frustrating;

- Initial movement options feel somewhat slow;

- Gameplay loop can become repetitive during extended, multi-hour sessions.

While comparisons to its inspirations are inevitable, LumenTale: Memories of Trey proves to be far more than a simple Pokémon clone. The developers successfully adopted working genre foundations, refined existing mechanics, and integrated fresh ideas to create a distinct identity. The 4v4 orb-management combat and rewarding extra-turn combos introduce a layer of tactical dynamism that I have always craved as a monster-taming enthusiast. Additionally, the user interface is masterfully designed to keep gameplay fluid.

Even though managing your party configuration for Holoken field obstacles can feel a bit tedious due to limited team slots, the overall experience is incredibly positive.

If you are already a fan of RPGs and creature-collection games, I highly recommend picking this up!

If you are new to the genre or usually find it hard to get into, LumenTale serves as an excellent entry point, offering a much more active and engaging experience than traditional monster-tamers. For players looking for a strategic adventure with an engaging story and gorgeous visuals, exploring a new world alongside your Animon is an excellent journey to undertake!

The only caveat is if you require constant mechanical novelties to stay engaged, as the core loop can feel a bit repetitive after the opening chapters.

Score: 9.5 out of 10.

Until next time!