Pokémon’s latest mobile game targeted little kids, but instead they got me.

A couple of months ago I was looking for a new mobile game to play. While I love playing Cut the Rope, it just wasn’t cutting it anymore. So, I perused the app store for a little while until I finally came across a game I wanted to try. Pokémon Friends is a cute, Pokémon themed puzzle game that released over the summer. Being both a fan of puzzle games and Pokémon, this game seemed right up my alley. The main audience for this game is younger kids, but I’ve actually found it quite fun.

The main loop of Pokémon Friends consists of completing puzzles, earning yarn, and making Pokémon plushies. At the beginning of the game, the player arrives in a place called “Think Town”, and apparently today is the day that you are finally going to fulfill your lifelong dream of making Pokémon plushies. The only problem is that all of your yarn is totally tangled, and, for some reason that the game doesn’t explain, the only way to untangle it is to solve puzzles. Once you have some untangled yarn, you are ready to throw it in the “Plush-o-Matic” and see what type of Pokémon plush you get. Oh, you thought you were going to make the stuffed animals yourself, didn’t you? There are many different kinds of yarn you can get that each have their own rates for how often you get certain plushies. The randomness is supposed to be like opening blind bags, which I know kids love, but it gets kind of annoying later in the game when you need a certain kind of Pokémon for requests (which I will get into later). There is a way to select a plush that you’ve already gotten randomly before to make it again, but it uses multiple balls of yarn and still isn’t the best system. Also, as a side note, I like how the Plush-o-Matic, which is shaped like a giant Poké Ball, shakes in the same way Poké Balls normally do when you are trying to catch a Pokémon.

The puzzles themselves are pretty entertaining. My favorite of the puzzles I’ve played is “Sableye’s Twisty Tracks,” where you have to rotate minecart tracks on a grid to make a path for Sableye’s minecart to get to the end. Additionally, there is “Pikachu’s Power Lines” which is one of those puzzles where you have to fill in the grid using one continuous line. Those are not the only ones, though, as there are several different types of puzzles, each of which have nine different difficulty levels. Each time you play it moves you up or down one difficulty level depending on how you perform. They never get that difficult per se, but when you get to higher levels, the timer starts seeming annoyingly short. It also cuts you off after the one-minute time limit, so if you can’t finish on time, you won’t get the satisfaction of figuring it out. Nevertheless, I enjoy the puzzles, and while none of them are particularly original, I really like the variety that they have.

I’m sure you’re asking, now that I’ve achieved my livelong goal of making Pokémon plushies, what am I going to do with them all? I mean, you could just let them sit in your inventory, but where’s the fun in that? You have two real options; you could arrange them in your dedicated plush room, or you could gift them to the townies. There is a menu in the game where you can see requests from the NPCs for specific plushies. When you fulfill the townspeople’s requests, they sometimes give you furniture items such as couches or shelves that you can use to further decorate your plush room. As you can see, the ultimate goal is to decorate your plush room, which is honestly kind of silly, but okay.

Pokémon Friend definitely plays like a kid’s game, which it is, but it’s fun if you’re bored. Their main focus is definitely educating kids (they even have a Wii-Fit-style calendar to stamp in the game), and I respect it for that. I don’t know that I agree with how much they are charging for it, but I guess they have to make a profit somehow. I should note that, while there are a few DLCs for the game, I only have $10 “Basic Pack” that lets you change the settings so you can play as much as you want every day. Pokémon Friends is a cute game and, for the most part, is a stress-free experience. There are a few frustrating parts, but for what it is, it’s pretty good. I would recommend at least the free version of the game to any younger Pokémon fan or anyone who wants a new puzzle game to try.