With three games in the course of a year, Nintendo and the Pokémon Company have discovered the money-making power of Pokémon on smart devices. Not looking to slow down, a fourth game has been announced for iOS and Android.
Playing With Poké-Toys
The Pokemon Company announced Pokéland, a new app game inspired by the Pokémon Rumble series. The game will have players explore a series of islands battling and collecting normal and toy Pokémon. As of today, the game's only available in Japan for alpha-testing through June 9. The current version features six islands to explore, 52 stages, and 134 types of Pokémon to catch, with the chance to reach the 15th floor of Champion Tower.
The game will require internet and connection to Nintendo accounts. This should be a nice feature for any Nintendo fans who may download the game since it will allow them to use their Mii character in-game. That said, Nintendo hasn't confirmed if players can get My Nintendo rewards from the app game.
As mentioned, the game is loosely based on the Pokémon Rumble series of games. In it, players controlled Pokémon that explored different dungeons and battled enemy Pokémon. These would culminate in boss battles and different upgrades for the player's Pokémon. The series has been met with mixed response, being one of the more overlooked Pokémon spinoff games. That said, the series did see a release on 3DS as recently as 2016, so there is clearly a desire for the game.
Something For Everyone
As mentioned earlier, this is the fourth Pokémon app game in just over a year and each game has been fairly distinct to each other. The biggest is, of course, Pokémon GO, which released last summer. The augmented reality game blew up over the summer, becoming the biggest app craze in quite a while. While it's fallen off a bit since, Pokémon GO has stayed in the top 20 list of downloaded apps, with consistent updates and events for faithful players.
Then came Pokémon Duel, a digital board game released earlier this year. In it, players controlled six figurines and have to reach the opponent's side first to win. While it didn't come anywhere near the success of Pokémon GO, Duel has managed to carve out a faithful audience who enjoy the board game.
The most recent release was Magikarp Jump. In it, players were given control over their own Magikarp to feed and train to win a Magikarp jumping league. Despite being such an odd entry, the game's simpler nature compared to GO and Duel makes it a nice entry point for someone looking to play an easier app game.
Now with Pokéland, the Pokémon Company has four entirely unique experiences on mobile devices.
