I have to agree with a lot of what sam said, and I'll admit I probably should have waited a little longer before making that recording. I'm not sure, I guess I just wanted to show the community I was doing something knowing i'll be going into even more difficult exams than the ones i'm revising for right now so will have even less time to be coding / hanging around these forums.

Here's my own take on things, for what it is worth.
I come from a background of not being into pokemon, and so never tried that other game, and never, tried egg hunt, huntation, or anything like that.

When ever I make a piece of software, or a game, I ask myself:
1. who is the target market. In this case, the blind community.
2. What do they already have.
Lets take, as an example, a first person shooter.
What do we already have?
Shades of doom comes to mind.
Alright, and what is shades of doom:
There are doors that you open by pressing enter, you walk around, you hear monsters, you have a navi unit.

Now lets look at my game here, which we'll call... um, myprogram.
So I then look at myprogram and go ok, in this concept, my character is walking around, and he's in a building, and he has a gun.
Alright, what about if we made it outdoor, as well, and added walls, so you could take cover behind them.
Hmm, this is looking more like a trench warfare game now, so lets introduce some enemies who have machine guns.
Ah, now we're getting into RTR territory, but RTR didn't have things to take cover behind, so lets make sure we have that, and by that extension, how can we make shooting a gun more interesting.
First, lets find out how you actually fire a gun, there has to be more too it than point and shoot...

Long story short, as I'm developing a concept for the game, I am also serving as its biggest critic. If you're making a game, and you want success, you should implement things never done before.
Your character is walking? Why?
Why can't he fly, or hell, why can he walk? What if he needs to hop, or swing from tree to tree.
You're shoot a gun? Why? Why not a bow and arrow.

Eventually, you'll wittle down your ideas, pulling each one apart until what you're left with is still the same thing(a first person shooter), but instead includes unique aspects such that you are a ranger in a forest with a bow and arrow, defending from an invading tribe whom you must slay and then help rebuild your village by gathering... You get the point.

That is what the community lacks, clear thinking unique games.
Taking elements from other games is great, and I commend Oh Shit, the various SB spin offs and the various characters included cross games, but at core of the matter, the reason why games like a heroes call, and the like are so successful, is they are *completely*, new.

that's what makes a good developer.

HTH

yeah, agreed, once i posted that manamon is a pokemon clone, people started bashing me....

Cloning, now that seems to be a sensitive topic in this small comunity of ours.  Just remember, an idea starts from somewhere, weather it be original, or an idea that stems from somebody else's creation; and besides isn't a clone an exact copy of something else?  For example if i were to create a concept demo like Tk, and mind you its only a concept, so the ideas of having your chars walk round the map and shoot one another would be shared.  Now thats as far as it would go to beeing TK.  Now, lets say I through in a small twist.  A I players.  Red spot you say?  correct.  Now it mimiks that and thats where i would have to come up with my own ideas.  Plenty to make my FPS stand out from those 2 games and those that spawned from them.  Thats where my creativity would have to come in to play.  And yes Manamon is mostly a rip off from pokemon, and yet we play it.  The sighted community has so many games that came from other games that its not even funny.  And to me it seems that a hero's call stemmed from Final Fanticy.  Take a look at music.  The music that came from ireland and Scotland came to the US and that became bluegrass, and then that became classic country, and that became todays country; wich spawned a bunch of other country  genres.  The same goes for Latin music. all that came from music from the African slaves, Spaniards, and local tribes.  Now what about cultures?  I could go on and on my friends.  We as humans could not come up with an original idea if it bit us in the ass.  All human ideas came from some idea another human before said human came up with.  I think we as a community need to not be so judgemental  towards one another when it comes to the games we have, but i do understand the bashing when it comes to and exact, and i mean an exact copy or clone of somebody elses game..

As others have said. We can not compare our market to the mainstream market, and so if someone directly copies an idea in the audio gaming community, it's a bigger deal than say if there is PUBG, Fortnight, and Apex in the mainstream community.
It's just the community we live in. It's way way way smaller and so mainstream rules don't apply.

I'm going to disagree, and here's why. The mainstream market has millions upon millions of games. These games run from arcade to puzzle and word, to rpg, to simulations, to types I can't even think of.
The Audio games market has... I dunno. Maybe 500 to 1000 games?
So invariably a game idea for example Manamon is going to be heavily inspired by a mainstream title. That's just the way of things.
We are such a small market that when a game or a concept is released, it gets a lot more attention due to the small number of games in our community compared to the mainstream.
I see nothing wrong with an audio game borrowing from the mainstream so long as it is not lifting that game block for block including it's characters and design. Everyone jumps on Manamon, but I consider it to be a reimagining of the creature collection jonra.
But the problem in this community is that we are starting to have people literally taking a concept, changing one tiny thing and calling it a new game. Look at Glass Breaker. It is literally Sound Fall with one line of code changed, and that line of code just changes the title of the window.
I have always said that I fully support a developer being inspired by an idea. BK3 is a prime example of someone taking an existing idea, building on it, and making an absolutely awesome title. But when you take an existing concept, copy it, and even create a name that is similar to capitalize on the original game's popularity? I am not a fan of this at all. It smacks of a lack of imagination.

You're trying to compare Apples to oranges.
The mainstream community is so vast that if someone copy's a game and releases it, people won't know about it unless it gains traction via a blog or news site. On the other hand, this community again. Everything is viewed under a microscope because let's face it. This is that news site. So no. I disagree. Cloning does not hurt the mainstream one bit.
Again. We can't compare the two as they're just completely different animals.

Nails in a coffin here. Comparing manamon to pokemon.

1. You are asked to pick a starter of the fire, grass or water type.
2. You get a rival who immediately wants to fight you.
3. You use random chance and weakening/status moves and nets/balls to capture wild creatures.
4. The first large dungeon of a lot of pokemon games is a forest. In Manamon it's Amica Woods.
5. You use stadiums/gyms to earn keys/badges in order to prove that you're the champion/master.
6. There's an evil organization of evilness.
7. You store your creatures in a computer.
8. You enter a hotel/pokemon center to heal your creatures, and said computer is found therein most of the time.
9. Type advantages/disadvantages are approximately 75% similar to pokemon, maybe more.
10. Status effect mechanics are similar (confusion, paralysis, burn, poison, toxic poison).
11. A final dungeon with gates that will unlock with all your badges/keys.
12. An "elite four" style final challenge.
13. A short story bit appended to the postgame and then the ability to rematch certain challenges from before.
14. Evolution.
15. Trading.
16. The second area is a cave in manamon and in several pokemon games.
17. Hold items.
18. Moves (in a few cases, direct name ripoffs, and in most others, just name swaps and accuracy modifiers).
19. The manapedia/pokedex.
20. Multi-target battle mechanics (as introduced in gen 3 of pokemon onward)
21. Random tamers/trainers.
22. In-game trades with NPCs.
23. Items/mechanics that let you travel fast across a large land mass.
24. Legendaries.
25. Belltower/Sprout Tower.
26. Tangeria Tower/Pokémon Tower.
27. Mt. Cinder/Mt. Chimney
28. Game corner/arcade-style way to earn coins, and then prizes to be won with those coins.

And that's just a cursory look. I'd say that's just a wee tiny bit more than just borrowing an overall concept. That seems pretty lazy in the extreme, to be perfectly blunt.

I played and enjoyed manamon because I decided to literally ignore the similarities for awhile. I also wanted my fifty-odd bucks worth; remember, I didn't see all these similarities when I first bought the game, or I probably wouldn't have bothered...but here we are.

So speaking personally? I gave Charlie some grief, and I think it's deserved. I also gave Aaron and Manamon in general grief, because I feel like Nintendo/Gamefreak could have an absolute field day with this, and much of it smacks of unoriginality. If you really wanted to use the monster-catching trope, there were way, way better ways to manage it.

Do we know what difference Digimon has from Pokemon? That just occured to me.

As I've said elsewhere, for me it comes back to how much you're ripping off an idea, and the scope of it.

If you're making a game that's basically Super Egg Hunt's cousin, that's a whole lot different than if you were to, say, make an RPG with a party system, turn-based combat, four main elements (earth, water, air, fire), a pseudo-JRPG story, quests, items and the like. The former feels thin and not very interesting. The latter...well at least you're taking the original source, stuff like Dragon Warrior/Final Fantasy, and making it very much your own thing.

And yes, in fact, concept cloning, as I've said before, absolutely -does have a greater impact when the community is smaller. Fewer people means each potential opinion is proportionally louder/more meaningful. Fewer games means the impact of each is greater. That's just basic math and common sense at this point.

So no. Do we need to jump down the throat of every new developer who takes bits of a mainstream idea, or another audio game, and attempts to make something new? Heck no. Concept cloning is often where good games start. But should we call it out when said concept cloning is particularly uninspired and lackluster? Me, I say yes. We don't need to insult people, but calling it what it is? I see no real harm in that.

You can argue left and right on cloning, but what it really comes down to is desperation. People are so desperate to play new games that they get angry when it's nothing new or exciting. I see people argue the issue with frivillous hostility and bitterness.
Oh another note, here're a couple of ways to boost up a game like Egg Hunt, or Packman, or any other collecting game. I originally wrote collection item, too caught up in bk lol.
The chicken has a machinegun! It would be hilarious to have it go wapp ba ba ba ba dadadadadadadadadadada!
You can travel across different terrain which affects various variables for you or the opponent, visibility, speed, reverse directions?
You could set various traps for the opponent that affects things like emobility, visibility, accuracy, no gun.
Bonus items spawn that give you a general indicator of where they are. You and your opponent has to raise to get it, and depending on who gets it first, bonuses will apply like previously described, and addition or subtraction to point.
I mean, there's a lot of shit you can do with it. Have the chicken call in an aviary death squad? Set a fox lose to hunt the chicken? It's not that hard guys. I'm in a stage of my life where creativity comes hard to me but I could do this all day.