Breachers: A Poke-Inspired Adventure!

Note: I'm looking to recruit a team for this! I've got the programming down, and I can manage to create decent music, but I'm terrible with graphical art, so if you're an artist looking for a project, read below and see if you're interested! :D

Background Info
I've been watching several Let's Plays of Nuzlocke challenges on YouTube lately, and started a Gold Nuzlocke myself. There are quite a few aspects of Pokemon that have made me think to myself, "Hmm, this could use some more story-based explanation," or "What if this was different?" Over time, the ideas began to coalesce into something that could form a fully cohesive game of its own, with obvious inspiration from the Pokemon core series. I call this game Breachers.

Currently, this is only a game idea, but when I have enough free time off work, I will begin development. I'll be using GameMaker Studio for this project, and it'll be available for Windows, with the very tentative potential to have an Android app version in the very distant future.

Story

Breachers takes place in an unspecified time period. Many years before, people began seeing strange creatures, alien to humans, appearing seemingly out of thin air. As scientists studied them, we learned that they originated from many different alternate universes, and had "breached" into our universe. The breaching was sometimes intentional, but usually accidental; somehow, our universe had become a nexus for all other universes to converge on. The creatures that came through, known as Breachers, ranged from alien to bestial, intelligent to mindless, natural to almost magical. As more Breachers arrived, it soon became clear that there were not nearly enough resources or space to sustain them all, and soon war broke out among both Breachers and humans alike. United against a host of common enemies, humans began to find ways to use the Breachers for their own purposes, using technologically-enhanced Shackles, which force their wearers to obey you. But not all humans agree on how to rid the world of the Breachers, or even on which Breachers should stay. Some people still condemn the wars and prefer to try and make peace with Breachers.

You have just come of age and are now an official Breacher Commander. Using your Shackles, you set out to capture as many Breachers as possible and use them to battle other Breachers, both wild and recruited, and save your universe in the way you believe it should be saved. Will you try and form alliances, and if so, with which Breachers? Or will you use them as tools to defeat your enemies? That's up to you.

Features/Gameplay

Of course, the Breachers are basically Pokemon--or, more accurately, Fakemon, since they'll all be custom creatures--and the Commanders are like trainers. Encounters and battles would work similarly to the Pokemon games, with a few exceptions:

1) Instead of PP, each Breacher has a set amount of stamina, and each move consumes a set amount of stamina. Stamina regenerates very slowly each turn of a battle and each step outside of battle, but the rate at which it does is usually not enough to counter moderate or heavy move spamming.

2) Most Commander battles will be at least double battles, if not triple. The game is about forming an army, not just leading with one creature and going solo. As such, after you get your first Breacher, you'll be forced to catch at least one more before progressing to the first Commander battle. This is also an important reminder that having some Breachers act as support for others can be extremely useful.

The Breacher type system would be similar to Pokemon's in mechanics, but in addition to focusing on biological attributes, types also determine the focus of a Breacher's combat techniques. They are (for now) as follows:

Spirit Breachers - Caught between universes, Spirit Breachers have ghostly abilities. These include shifting, which uses a move/turn but guarantees the opponent will miss their next move, and can be used out of battle to pass through certain materials in walls or floors. Other similar abilities mean that Spirit Breachers focus mainly on evasion, stalling out opponents until they run out of stamina and can be taken down with otherwise weak moves.

Mental Breachers - Psychic-type, basically. They rarely use damaging moves, instead focusing on battle manipulation. For example, they may cause the opponent to use their next move on themselves, alter the stats or stamina of an opponent, make an opponent temporarily forget a move, or even cause the opponent to switch out or the battle to be forefeited. They can also help persuade wild Breachers to join your party without wasting a Shackle attempt.

Body Breachers - Similar to fighting/normal types, these guys focus on brute force. So high-attack, high-defense, but low special (both attack and defense).

Tech Breachers - Creations of other Breachers and, sometimes, humans, Tech Breachers have high defense and otherwise average stats. They are immune to Mental attacks, but weak to other Tech attacks. They can learn moves which help you outside of battle, for things like hacking or data access (i.e. getting into new areas, disabling traps, etc.)

Illusory Breachers - Masters of illusion, these guys focus on manipulating accuracy. They can create distractions that lower opponents' accuracy, or paint targets in the air to help allies hit their opponents better. They can even frighten opponents into flinching.

Chemical Breachers - These guys focus on chemical attacks, either because they naturally produce toxins or because they're smart enough to invent chemical weapons. Chemical attacks usually afflict status effects on their targets, but can also deal direct damage (in addition to the status effects).

Thermal Breachers - Combination fire/ice type moves can be learned by them. Generally about freezing, burning, and direct damage.

Aquatic Breachers - Obviously water-type moves. Some of these deal damage, while many move things around, manipulating turn order or forcing an opponent to swap out to a different Breacher, or even moving an opponent to your side of the battlefield causing them to miss you and hit their allies instead. Some Aquatic Breachers can't survive out of the water, so if you send them out in a land battle, they'll take suffocation damage each turn.

Primal Breachers - Nature-based, they have high attack and low defense. They're very offensive, direct-damage types. They're also the best type for utilizing the environment, i.e. learning moves that are affected by weather, climbing nearby trees to increase evasion, using rocks or sticks on the ground as weapons to increase attack, etc. (Every Breacher can learn some of these types of moves, but Primals can learn many more than the others.) Additionally, Primal Breachers are the only type that can learn moves which manipulate the environment, i.e. growing trees for protection, creating rain to boost water attacks, creating sun to boost fire attacks, carving a river that reduces the number of Breachers out at one time, etc.

Healing Breachers - They rarely attack, preferring to be a healing support for your allies and healing themselves as well. Of course, to heal, they have to come out onto the battlefield, where they can be a target for enemies, so use them strategically.

Progress
July 25, 2016: Implemented full messagebox system to be used throughout the game; added terminology for weaknesses and resistances ("[Breacher] resisted the attack!" vs "[Breacher] submitted to the attack!"). Next steps: implementing turn order, move selection, and target selection during battles.
July 24, 2016: Rebalanced type effectiveness so that every type has exactly one weakness and one effectiveness. Implemented type effectiveness into the game, as well as created a modular system for adding basic damaging attacks (which should still be relatively simple to add special attacks into as well). Implemented stamina 100%. Next steps: implementing message system, turn order, move selection, and target selection during battles.

May 13, 2016: Worked out type effectiveness chart. It was a bit difficult to keep it balanced and still thematically sensible, but I think the final result works out quite well :) Next step: implementing this chart in the battle system.

May 9, 2016: Created a temporary logo; began development using extremely temporary sprites stolen from DeviantArt. Emphasis on "extremely temporary"--they will not be in any of the released versions. First to be developed: basic damaging attack functionality. Not enough art for screenshots or function for a pre-alpha yet.

May 6, 2016: Created this thread to explain the concept of the coming game.

Screenshots
Type effectiveness chart. Red cells mean the top type is weak to the side type; green cells mean the top type is strong against the side type; black cells mean the top type is completely immune to the side type.

Credits
Nintendo for the Pokemon inspiration
Artist credits TBD

Final Thoughts: Since I'm hoping this will become at least half as expansive a universe as Gen I Pokemon, it will require at least 75 different Breacher species. That means lots of art! The more artists on this project, the merrier; so if you're an artist, please contact me if you're interested in helping out :D