不少人在15岁的年龄都正在上高中，学习驾车，不再顺从父母的意志，总是做些有点叛逆的事情。但Josh Buckley可不是这种普通的青少年，他在15岁时就卖掉了自己的公司，不过当时的售价仅6位数。

现在这名弱冠少年已是一名18岁的企业家和天使投资人，他与17岁的工程师Tyler Diaz联合创建了《MinoMosters》，它是一款风格类似于《口袋妖怪》（Pokemon）的社交游戏，支持玩家收养宠物怪兽，并以此相互决斗。

MinoMosters-screen-shot

据Y Combinator Partner的Paul Graham所称，Buckley和Diaz是其资助的最年轻的创业组合。游戏邦获悉，Buckley的公司还刚刚聘用了苹果最年轻的工程师（但为了保护对方隐私，不便公布其姓名）。

Buckley在15岁时出售的公司是Menewsha，它是一个定制虚拟形象的在线社区。《MinoMosters》的画面风格充满Menewsha这个项目的影子，同时也深受《口袋妖怪》和日本漫画的影响。

不过《MinoMonsters》并非Buckley向日本游戏致敬的作品，他直言自己将《口袋妖怪》视为直接竞争对手，“我们想超越《口袋妖怪》……它是这十年来影响力最大的品牌之一，不过它的发展有赖于掌机市场，而后者近年来正在走下坡路，但我们关注的却是社交和手机游戏领域。”

游戏邦了解到，在这款社交游戏中，玩家可以收养宠物，并为其命名，然后在虚拟世界中执行游戏任务，让它与好友的宠物怪兽过招，从而赢取金币。然后玩家可以用这些虚拟货币购买不同的道具，比如说可以提高健康值的药水。另外，你还可以邀请好友参与游戏，在Facebook上分享自己的游戏成就。

这款游戏的音效特别出色（听起来很像是日本武打男主角的配音），还提供了一个交互式的新手教程，说明了游戏故事背景，指导玩家提升自己的技能，以便在与对手的较量中获胜。

在过去几年中，Zynga的现身说法证明了社交游戏并非儿童的专利，所以《MinoMonsters》也打算增加更有深度的内容，更细致的角色形象（比如超越《口袋妖怪》的风格），以丰富游戏功能，提高它在不同平台的曝光率，吸引各个年龄层的用户。游戏邦获悉，Buckley和Diaz原先只是将《MinoMonsters》作为一个网站项目来运营，但Buckley表示，Facebook的CEO马克·扎克伯格说服他们将游戏移植到Facebook平台，他们在不到一周的时间中就完成了这个操作。扎克伯克亲自出面邀请，相信任何人都不会拒绝的。

Buckley的公司在上个月才刚成立，但发展很迅速，该游戏在一周时间内就聚集了2.5万名用户，目前该网站的数据显示，其月活跃用户已接近9.5万。该公司已获得Y Combinator、Yuri Milner、SV Angel的Start Fund的资助，现在正筹备最新的天使轮融资。

当问到对当代青年创业者有何建议时，Buckley的观点是，年轻人应该多与“杰出的人物和其他企业家往来，同时要有相信自己的勇气，学习他人的经验。这两者的结合非常重要。”

现在用户可通过访问《MinoMonsters》网站，或者Facebook平台体验该游戏，这款游戏的手机版本也已进入开发阶段。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

Youngest Y Combinator Founders Launch MinoMonsters, The Pokemon Of Social Games

At age 15, most normal people are going to high school, learning to drive, not listening to their parents, and doing things that they’ll later tell their kids not to do. Josh Buckley is not a normal teenager. At 15, he was selling his first company for just over six figures.

Today, the 18-year-old entrepreneur and angel investor has partnered with 17-year-old engineer Tyler Diaz to co-found MinoMonsters, a social game in which players collect and battle pet monsters.

According to Y Combinator Partner Paul Graham, Buckley and Diaz are the youngest pair of founders it has ever accepted into the fold. What’s more, to put the icing on the Millenial entrepreneurs’ cake, Buckley told me that the startup just hired Apple’s youngest engineer. (But cannot yet reveal his name for legal reasons.)

As for the game: MinoMonsters is basically what Pokemon would look like if it were started today. The company that Buckley sold when he was 15, Menewsha, was an online community that produced customizable avatars. MinoMonsters’ impressive graphics owe their style both to Buckley’s prior work with avatar animations as well as the renderings of Pokemon and Japanese anime.

Of course, the ambition of the young dictates that not only does MinoMonsters pay homage to the style of the Japanese media franchise, Buckley said that he sees Pokemon as a direct competitor, “We want to take on Pokemon … They were one of the huge brands at the start of the decade, but their strategy has stayed with the declining console market, where as we are focusing on social and mobile.”

As such, the social game allows you to adopt and name various pet monsters, after which you can embark on quests across the game’s virtual world, battling your friends’ monsters to earn pieces of gold. You can then use this currency to buy different items, like potion to improve your health. You can also invite friends, and share your conquests on Facebook.

There’s a great voice-over (that sounds like it’s narrated by some martial arts-hardened Japanese actor) and interactive tutorial that will walk you through the game’s backstory and teach you how you how to develop your different attack moves.

Over the last few years, Zynga has proven that social games are no longer played only by kids, so MinoMonsters is making an effort to offer deeper content and more detailed character bios (than, say, Pokemon), hoping that enriched features and the game’s availability on a number of different platforms, will encourage people of all ages to join. Initially, Buckley and Diaz launched MinoMonsters as a website-only project, but Facebook Founder Jesse Eisen … er … Mark Zuckerberg, Buckley told me, convinced them to port the game over to the social network, which they were able to do in less than a week. Obviously, if you get a personal invitation from Zuck, you can’t turn him down.

The startup soft launched last month and has been growing quickly since. Within a week, the game had amassed 25,000 players, and today the site’s data shows that it has just under 95,000 active monthly users. The startup has already raised money from Y Combinator, and Yuri Milner and SV Angel’s Start Fund. And the company is currently in the process of raising another angel round.

When asked if he had any advice for aspiring young entrepreneurs, Buckley said that young guns should surround themselves with “brilliant people and other entrepreneurs. Trust your gut and learn from the experience of others”, he said. “It’s a deadly combination”.

Amen.

MinoMonsters is currently available at its website and on Facebook, and a mobile app is in the works. TechCrunch readers can visit this splash page to get 5 free bonus points.（source:techcrunch）