I’ll be very blunt in these impressions: From everything I’ve seen, Monster Tale, the second game from the developers of Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure, looks amazing. With beautiful 2D art, enthralling exploration-based gameplay, and a charming pet-raising mechanic, this Majesco-published title promises to be one of the best games on DS in 2011.

It begins with your heroine, a little girl named Ellie, waking up in a weird world. Disoriented, her first instinct (and likely yours) is to go right to progress through the game. However, you’ll find out quickly that you can’t go to the right. Much like Metroid, the game Monster Tale is heavily inspired by, you have to go to the left to pick up a power-up to move on. In this case, you earn the Band Blaster, which is a short-ranged projectile that functions in a similar manner as Samus Aran’s initial blaster in the first Metroid.

After getting past the opening scene, you journey around, completing simple platforming challenges to get to a mysterious room with a red-and-white egg. Shortly after, the egg hatches, revealing a playful monster. Ellie tells the monster to find its mommy and bails. When she leaves the room, the monster tails her, causing Ellie to feel remorse. She dubs the monster Chomp, and the game opens up even more, introducing you to more of the world and Chomp’s abilities.

Chomp, for the most part, is a chaotic creature. He wanders the top screen, attacking enemies that show up on screen at his own volition. However, with the press of a button, you can send him down to the bottom screen, where he recharges and can interact with a variety of items, including switches that open up areas for Ellie, food and books that help him gain experience, and items such as a soccer ball and a catapult that attack enemies on the top screen. He can level up, increasing his stats. In addition, he learns skills, which are moves mapped to the L and R buttons, that can launch him forward like a torpedo, give Ellie a boost up to new heights, and even heal her. Chomp can also learn traits, which give stat boosts.

Adding another layer onto Chomp are the different forms he can evolve into. He begins the game as a meek Foundling, but soon enough, you’ll unlock a variety of forms that have different specialties and alignments. Some forms will be very aggressive, while others focus on protecting Ellie. Each form has different skills and traits to learn that you can use with any other form after you level that form up even more. It becomes addictive in a similar way that Pokémon is as its fun to see what each form is and what moves you can learn. As you work your way through the game, Chomp actually grows up, becoming a teenager and later an adult, both of which open up new evolution trees.

The Ellie-focused gameplay is a by-the-books Metroid-esque experience. She gains numerous abilities, including a wall jump and a roll that is reminiscent of Samus’ morph ball, that open up different parts of the environment. There is a lot of backtracking to get to areas you couldn’t reach before, which is kind of a genre staple. She starts off rather weak, but with the discovery of new abilities and the purchase of stat upgrades found in shops spread out across the game’s world, she becomes quite the powerhouse.

As Ellie and Chomp explore the world around them, the story unfolds. Ellie and Chomp need to take on the five kid kings, who each have their own world, and restore the balance and harmony to the monster world. Each kid king, complete with a pet monster, is brimming with personality, from the snooty ringleader Priscilla to the turntable-spinning Meade. The latter is the first main boss, which forces you to balance Ellie and Chomp on the top and bottom screen to defeat him. The fight takes place in The Scratch Pit, a club where monsters dance to Meade’s music. Speaking of which, the music in Monster Tale is wonderful, harkening back to the wonderful soundtracks of the Super Nintendo era. The graphics are equally as impressive, featuring gorgeous 2D animation.

Monster Tale looks extraordinarily promising, and any fan of 2D or Metroid-style games should be marking their calendars for March.