If you’ve been playing video games for long enough, the love ofPokémonand creature collector games has been hard-baked into your DNA. Both myself and pretty much everyone else born in the early 90s have at least some degree of fondness for those multicolored critters, and anyone who says they don’t is lying to themselves.
Of course, Pokémon is Nintendo’s express property, and unless the unlikely day comes when it finally feels like sharing its toys, you’ll never see a Pokémon game on anything but a Nintendo platform,ROM Hacksnotwithstanding.
Every Mainline Pokemon Generation, Ranked By Story
While the Pokemon games are more known for their characters and mechanics, it doesn’t mean there aren’t some great stories in there.
It would be nice to have a Pokémon game you can play on more platforms, PC especially, as that’s the platform I do most of my gaming on. While we’ll probably never see an official Pokémon PC release, various indie game developers have taken it upon themselves to create copyright-safe facsimiles of the massive franchise, eager to put their own spin on a series that doesn’t always adhere to what fans want.
If you’re looking to scratch that Pokémon itch without having to pay the plumber, these are the games to do it with.
Pokémon Your Way
I like the modern Pokémon games fine, but my heart will always belong to the 2D classics on the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance. It’s those particular games that best reflect the standard Pokémon formula, the one that’s easiest for everyone to get on board with. It’s this formula that Coromon seeks to emulate, albeit with a few extra tweaks to better reflect the desires of modern fans.
On the surface, Coromon is the same basic gist as those old Pokémon games, placing you on a journey across the land to catch critters, challenge trainers, and battle against bad guys. There are over 100 creatures to collect and battle in a stamina-based system, encouraging you to swipe moves from your opponent to keep your mons fighting.
Where Coromon distinguishes itself is in its meta aspects. The game has various difficulty tweaks you can use to curate your experience. You can keep things simple if you prefer, but there are also built-in randomizer andNuzlocke runtoggles if you really want to get into that brutal Pokémon spirit.
8Nexomon: Extinction
A Little Extra RPG Spice
Nexomon: Extinction
The Pokémon games are, for all intents and purposes, JRPGs, but they’ve never really felt like that. It’s hard to say why, precisely; maybe it’s just because some aspects of the games’ worlds don’t feel quite as alive or engaging as you may expect from a game of that genre. If you want a Pokémon game with a little more of that RPG spice, try Nexomon: Extinction.
This game is a sequel to the original Nexomon, which was more of a paired-down mobile game. Nexomon: Extinction is a fully-fledged console release, with 381 Nexomon to collect, train, and battle across various regions and climates. Much like Coromon, the basic bones of a Pokémon game are more or less the same here, such as type matchups and combinations.
The chief difference is in dynamically adjusting gameplay. For example, trainers that you’ve defeated don’t just stay defeated forever. They’ll come back later in the game with freshly-trained Nexomon, ready to take a proper swing at you.
Battling in certain environments like freezing tundras and scalding caves can also preemptively inflict status effects on your Nexomon, forcing you to switch up your strategy with the terrain.
How Did Someone Beat Nintendo To This?
Speaking as someone who doesn’t even like MMORPGs that much, it’s still downright mystifying to me that Nintendo has never attempted to make an MMO Pokémon game. The idea writes itself; the Pokémon world is full of Trainers who want to catch ‘em all and battle, so why not let the Trainers be players?
Maybe Nintendo just didn’t want to have toput up with an online community, but that’s just one reasonTemtembeat them to the punch.
Temtem is pretty much exactly what I just said: an entire world of creature collecting with all the usual trappings like regions and important trainer people to seek out, except it’s online. The entire world is always online, allowing all players coming and going to see and interact with each other. You can keep to yourself if you prefer, but you can also chat and battle with anyone else passing by.
There are 165 Temtems to collect, train, and battle, both in the game’s main campaign and in its dedicated competitive battle mode. There’s also a few extra traditional MMO touches, like player customization and being able to buy and renovate your own in-game home.
6Cassette Beasts
Winding Pencil Included
Cassette Beasts
While I was born just a little too late to actually listen to cassette tapes, I’ve always appreciated their aesthetic. A little chunk of plastic with some magnetic tape in it held a wondrous world of music within. Apparently, that world is even more wondrous than I thought, because in Cassette Beasts, those tapes are the key to your ability to transform into a myriad of battling monsters.
Cassette Beasts is a two-on-two creature collecting RPG. You’ve always got a partner with you, and when confronted by beasts or baddies, you press play on your tape decks to transform into the monster whose tape is loaded up.
It’s the usual turn-based battle from there, with one big wrinkle: when you and your partner are hyped up, you canfuse your monsters togetherinto a single hybrid monster with merged stats and typing. It’s kind of like that one season of Digimon where the kids turned into Digimon.
Pokemon Infinite Fusion Walkthrough
A guide to Pokemon Infinite Fusion, a fan made Pokemon game using the setting from FireRed and LeafGreen.
The game also utilizes a bond system between your partners, with your relationship improving by completing their personal quests. How close you are with whoever you’re traveling with will determine how powerful the ensuing hybrid monster is when you fuse together in battle.
5Monster Sanctuary
Mons Meets Metroid
Monster Sanctuary
The inherent openness of the Metroidvania genre makes it a surprisingly good genre to mash up with others, kind of like how combining it with Minecraft yielded Terraria. In that same vein, if you take a Pokémon game and throw in a healthy splash of sidescrolling Metroidvania, the game you end up with isMonster Sanctuary.
While Pokémon games have their fair share of adventuring and navigating, they’ve never gotten much into the realm of platforming. That’s a big area where Monster Sanctuary differs: each of the 111 monsters you can capture can lend you their aid in the form of various movement and exploration abilities, with which you can uncover the map and seek out treasures and secrets.
Of course, it’s still got that Pokémon battling mojo baked in, albeit with a relatively larger emphasis on team synergy. Your monsters hit the field three at a time, and you’ll only get the most out of them if you properly coordinate their types and moves into a cohesive squad.
Pikachu’s Got A Gun
If you’re a fan of Pokémon in any capacity, you undoubtedly heard the tremendous buzz that arose whenPalworldwas first announced. However, contrary to what that initial trailer may have implied, it’s not about giving your little beasties a gun and letting them run wild. Well, it’s notjustthat, anyway.
Palworld is a genre hybrid game of creature collecting and base-building survival-crafting. There are plenty of wild Pals roaming around for you to capture and use in battle, but you can also put them to work harvesting resources like minerals and food or guarding your base. Both you and your Pals are capable of using guns, so even if you’re out in the wild alone, you’re not completely defenseless.
Palworld has quite a bit of cruelty potential, if you’re into that sort of thing. Every Pal has its own emotional boundaries, and if you push them too hard, they could become catatonic with depression. Additionally, there are human enemies using both Pals and guns, and if you’re feeling especially unethical, you’re able to capture them in a ball and enslave them. Fun!
Gotta Snak ‘Em All
Making something akin to Pokémon doesn’t automatically mean making an RPG. You don’t have to train and battle creatures to be a creature collecting game, you just need to collect them. In the case ofBugsnax, you collect them and feed them to your friends and neighbors to turn them into wacky living food mutants. Y’know, as one does.
Bugsnax is all about hunting and capturing the various anthropomorphic food critters that litter Snaktooth Island, learning their behaviors and leading them into traps. Every Snak has different mannerisms and preferences, and you’ll need to get a little creative to find them all. It’s less like traditional Pokémon and more like Pokémon Snap without the on-rails aspect.
Despite the silly premise and a cast of characters who look like discount Muppets, it’s also got a great story that hits on some surprisingly complex subject matter. There’s got to be something pretty messed up in a person’s life to drive them out to a deserted island, after all. Or “desserted” island, if you will.
Life In The Slow Lane
Another thing I’ve always wanted to see out of the Pokémon franchise but still haven’t gotten is a cozy life sim. Tell me you wouldn’t love to live next door to a friendly dude and his elderly, affectionate Charizard. Unfortunately, despite being a slam dunk waiting to happen, Nintendo hasn’t jumped on that idea either, so that just leavesOobletsto take the obvious concept instead.
Ooblets is a hybrid farming and creature collection game, placing you in charge of a plot of land and having you raise crops and till the soil. You’re not growing produce, though, you’re growing Ooblets, cute little critters who follow you around, brighten up your life, and occasionally help out with the farmwork within their ability to do so.
Between farming, you’re able to also travel around town, meet the locals, get jobs from the Mayor, and find other ways to busy yourself.
If you prefer the competitive aspect of Pokémon, Ooblets does have that, though instead of battling, you duke it out on the dancefloor. Every Ooblet can learn its own unique dance moves, managed via a card system, and team up into a crew to really tear things up.
1Beastieball
Battling, Volleyball, Same Difference
I know that, in the world of Pokémon, battling is largely a sport in itself, but I’ve always felt there’s underutilized potential for Pokemon-based traditional sports. Maybe it’s just because I like the idea of superhumans playing baseball, but I think it’d be cool to see a bunch of Pokémon go head-to-head in soccer or basketball. Or volleyball, in the case of Beastieball.
Utilizing the framework of sporting RPGs like the Game Boy Mario Golf, Beastieball has you capturing critters and molding them into the perfect two-on-two combat volleyball team. Matches aren’t won by just hurling your strongest moves at each other; teammates need to set up and shoot the ball, applying buffs to one another and debuffs to foes.
Additionally, where your party members in a Pokémon game largely exist independently of one another, your monsters in Beastieball are very well aware of each other. By competing together, your critters can form friendships, rivalries, and even romances, all of which alter their performance on the court. I always wanted my Pokémon to be friends with each other.
Every Game Boy Pokemon Game, Ranked
From Pokemon Blue to Pokemon Red Rescue Team, the Game Boy era was a glorious time to be a Pokemon fan.
