Bulu Monster

I opened Bulu Monster expecting a light monster-catching game to fill a few evenings, and for the first twenty minutes that's exactly what it was. You name your trainer, pick a starter, drag it into your team and walk out into Sleepy Village while a cheerful guide points at the next thing to tap.

The moment that made me stop came a few quests later. The game asked me to catch a Cobra, opened a long shelf of capture balls, and the only ball I actually owned showed a 1% success rate against a wild monster at full health.

That little number says a lot about how this game is built, and it's also where the VipMod mod makes the biggest difference. Here's what my first hour looked like, first without the mod and then with it switched on.

Every fight is one move at a time

Battles are classic turn-based duels. You choose which of your monsters goes out, pick one of up to four moves, and then both sides trade hits until somebody's HP bar runs dry.

My starter was Firechick, a round little ball of flame whose opening move is Burning Dash. In the tutorial fight against a level 3 Cobra, that first Burning Dash took 24 of the snake's 41 HP, and a second hit finished it off for 123 EXP.

Each move also has a limited number of uses, shown as a fraction like 14/15 after you've used it once. It's a small detail, but it means longer trips into the wild need potions and a little planning instead of spamming your strongest attack every turn.

A new move every couple of levels, and points you place yourself

Leveling is where Bulu Monster gets more interesting than it first looks. Every time a monster levels up, its HP, attack, defense and speed all tick up on their own, and then the game hands you an extra stat point to drop wherever you like.

New moves show up quickly in the early levels. Firechick picked up Dash, then Squeal, which cuts the enemy's defense by 20%, and later Peck, which also gives your own monster a 10% speed boost, so the four move slots filled up within a few fights.

Catching is the other half of building a team. You weaken a wild monster, swipe through your balls and throw one, and the percentage printed under each ball tells you how likely that throw is to stick.

Scroll far enough through that shelf and you'll find a ball with a 100% success rate, but I had none of those. The regular kind was the only one the early quests handed out, ten at a time, and every one of them showed that same 1% against a healthy Cobra.

Quests that ask for one exact monster number

Outside of battles, the game runs on a quest board. Each quest shows a monster's number from the Monster Book and a task, such as defeating two of No. 010 or capturing one No. 012, with a reward like a stack of ten potions.

The world map opens up region by region from Sleepy Village, and each area is a grid of hex tiles with treasure chests and wild monsters wandering between them. My first chest held 50 coins, and the Search button on certain tiles is how you start a wild battle.

There's plenty around the edges too. You get a farm for your monsters, an Arena, a Monster Book that pays out as you discover and catch more species, a daily gift calendar, and Lucky Draw tickets that the game walks you through spinning early on.

The news board is busy for a game this old. When I played, it was running a Night Parade event, the third part of the game's 13th anniversary, and a notice about a special monster showing up in Iceland a couple of days later.

Search cooldowns, skip buttons and a lot of discounts

The slow parts are easy to spot once the tutorial lets go of your hand. Quest targets are specific monsters, and the Search button often needs a while before it turns up a fight, so finding two of one exact species can take far longer than the reward is worth.

Every quest also has a Done button that skips it for 10 green gems. Those gems arrive in small amounts, such as the 3 I got from a Monster Book milestone, so skipping even one quest feels expensive.

The shop is never far away either. As soon as I reopened the game, it showed me a Limited Time Package with 250 premium coins for $5.99 marked 90% off, followed by three more bundles at $2.99, $5.99 and $9.99. A shopping ad banner also sits along the top of the map screen the whole time.

Twelve switches, and what happened when I flipped them

The mod lives behind a floating MOD button that sits over the game. Tap it and you get twelve switches, all of them part of VIP1, and almost all of them work the moment you flip them without a restart.

I turned on Invincibility, EXP x10 and Guaranteed catch first and walked back into the wild. A Cobra hit Firechick and its HP stayed at 46/46, and beating that Cobra paid out 1,137 EXP instead of the 123 I got in the tutorial, which took Firechick from level 5 to level 10 in a single fight.

Next I threw one of those 1% balls at a Cobra that hadn't taken a single hit, and it was mine on the first throw. With the quest switch on, two ordinary Cobras completed a quest that wanted No. 010, and the ten potions landed in my bag.

Auto battle was the one I enjoyed most. I started a wild fight, kept my hands off the screen, and Firechick came out, chose its own move and won. Damage x100 was just as obvious, because my level 1 Pangi knocked out a full-health level 3 Cobra with one Sandstrike.

Guaranteed escape got me out of four wild battles in a row without a single failed attempt. The Monster Book switch needed a restart, but after that the Discovered Monsters reward lit up and paid out 3 gems as soon as I tapped GET. A few things worth knowing before you start:

• Bulu Monster won't even load without an internet connection, so test the stronger switches on a spare account before you touch your main one.
• Switch the damage boosts off whenever you want to add a monster to your team, because a wild monster that faints can't be caught.
• There's no switch for premium coins or green gems, so those still come from quests, rewards or the shop.
• Pick just one of the three speed levels at a time.

How it holds up after an hour

The best thing about Bulu Monster is how much it packs into a small, friendly game. The monsters are bright and well drawn, the turn-based fights are easy to follow, and choosing where to put each extra stat point gives you a real sense of building your own team.

The weak spots are the waiting and the selling. The Search delay makes hunting for one exact monster drag on, and the parade of discounted bundles after every login gets old quickly, even when you never tap any of them.

On Google Play in the US it sits at 4.2 stars from about 241,000 ratings, with more than 5 million downloads. That fits what I saw in my own session: a well-liked game with a lot of charm that asks for a great deal of your time.

So who should play it

If you grew up on monster-catching games and want something lighter to play in short bursts on your phone, this one is easy to like. The first hour moves quickly, and the quest board always gives you a next goal to chase.

If you've tried it before and quit because of the grind, that's where the mod earns its place. EXP x10 and Auto battle take the sting out of leveling, Guaranteed catch fixes the 1% ball problem, and the quest switch saves you from hunting one particular species across the whole map.