Ahead of the actual Halloween festivities in the United States, Niantic began rolling out special features in the Pokémon GO app in celebration of the holiday.
Pokémon has had its generous share of ghost types in the mainline games, with some even being part of a complex and haunting lore, so it's only natural that the developers are taking advantage of this aspect and tie it with the celebration to offer more reasons for players to get back to catching Pokémon.
Starting Oct. 26 through Nov. 1, Niantic is going to offer double candy rewards for players alongside more ghost type Pokémon run-ins. However, because the feature is now live for all Pokémon GO players, some users have noticed easter eggs and hidden features that Niantic didn't include in the announcement video posted on Monday.
In the video, Niantic promised that Drowzee, Gastly, Gengar, Golbat, Haunter and Zubat would pop up more, but users seem to also be noticing the increased appearances of other Pokémon as well including Cubone, its evolution Marowak and Meowth, with a reported spawn incidence of seven up to 10 in a single playthrough.
Apart from the increased appearances from certain Pokémon, the loading screen when you fire up the game is also updated with a more spooky, theme-appropriate photo of an ominous gengar, sporting red, flashy eyes darting at a looming silhouette of a trainer on his phone, playing the game.
Over at The Silph Road subreddit, it's been confirmed that although catching, transferring and hatching will net two times the candy than before, evolutions will not get you double the amount of rewards. Also, while it's true that lures and incense might attract more Halloween Pokémon than usual, regular Pokémon will still spawn at their nests.
Pokémon GO's Halloween even appears to be a crucially successful inroad for Niantic, an achievement it sorely needs to recapture the explosive audience it earned in the initial release of the game. Many are dropping out of the craze because of Niantic's proclivity to tighten up security measures, rendering much of third-party experiments incompatible for the app.
As reported by Forbes, the app shot back on the top of the charts in the App Store mere moments after the Halloween update went live for every user, which is a positive financial turnout for Niantic.
It stands to reason that what players need in order to keep participating in Pokémon GO is not to have more events such as this one, but to really muscle improvements inward that will spell long-term engagement for players and not just one-hit go-through-it-once special events that are fleeting. Here's hoping that Niantic can bring these to the table in the long run.
