The design and characters are copyrighted but my understanding is game mechanics are not. If you want to reach out to IP owners, you should have a clear unders

The design and characters are copyrighted but my understanding is game mechanics are not. If you want to reach out to IP owners, you should have a clear understanding of why you are doing it, because now you have another cook in the kitchen, so-to-speak. If you are planning to recreate the game digitally with same characters and mechanics, then I can understand why. If you are planning to use the characters in a new game, I can also understand why. But if you want to just copy the game mechanics but alter the characters, it is permitted - everybody understands that game mechanics is free to be copied.