Casual Gaming Saturday 6

Somehow I got yesterday's number wrong... lol.

Game: Pokemon Shuffle
Developer: Genius Sonority
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo 3DS, Android, iOS

Do you like Bejeweled? Do you like Pokemon? Have you ever wanted to jam the two together? Now you can! Or... uh... you've been able to since 2015...

The goal of Pokemon Shuffle is the same as for any Pokemon game: Catch every adorable monster you bump into. Since this is a Bejeweled-style game of swapping images to do damage and/or collect items, the Pokemon cannot be full-bodied creatures or you'd never be able to tell what you're looking at. If you've played Disney's Tsum-Tsum, you've seen the tactic for showing who's who - make everything round.

Now for some Pokemon, like Electrode or Ghastly, you're gonna end up with no real issues - they're already round - but for Pokemon like, say, Beedrill, it's not as easy, so they've boiled down to their essence: a head with some defining features. I know, it sounds macabre, but it's actually pretty cute. I'd compare it to the "chibi" style of manga art, but it's even more simplified in some ways and far more complex in others.

With the cute artwork comes some bouncy, fun, cutesy music. If you're not a fan of peppy tunes using a lot of music box chimes, then you're not going to love this music. As you progress through the zones of the game at the behest of a reporter who's basically stalking you for funsies, you get different tunes. You might be fighting Pokemon on a dock, at a festival, in a forest, or even in the city streets, but she's apparently watching your every move. I'm ok with this. I think she's the one supplying you with free stuff every day that you log on, she lets you know how strong the reward vs risk is on higher level Pokemon, and she's pretty nice, so she can be my weirdly helpful friend at a distance if she really wants to.

Don't look for a story here - it's a casual mobile puzzle game. There's no gangs to beat, no Elite 4 to dethrone (as far as I can see), and while Legendaries are really really hard to catch, they don't disappear if you flub it the first time. My only real quibble is that you can't actually choose a starter like you can in every Pokemon game (except for, you know, Yellow, where you have Pikachu no matter what...). In fact - you don't start with *any* Pokemon. And you don't get to choose who you catch when - you face Espurr the first time every time. It's always your first Pokemon.

I still have to give props to a game that actually gives you a Psychic type as your "starter". That's new!

All in all, Pokemon Shuffle is a pretty fun game. The biggest differences among platforms seems to be largely cosmetic, since you don't use the buttons on the 3DS version very often, relying fully on the stylus/your finger.

Fun game, good times. I can't catch Articuno because I'm still a scrub...

Go Enjoy Something!
FC