Nyheter
PC games for people who love Pokémon
B
Brittany Alva
Coromon
For people who love retro-style graphics and are looking for a classic monster-taming experience, Coromon is the game to pick up. With endearing pixel graphics, a classic story that rivals many Pokémon entries, and a complex fighting system, it’s the perfect title for anyone looking for the closest game to Pokémon.
One of the biggest selling points of Coromon (besides its genre) is the ability to choose from a variety of difficulties and settings to play how you want. There’s a casual mode for anyone who isn’t looking for difficult fights, as well as are several challenge modes and settings to take the game to the next level.
Many Pokémon-like games struggle when it comes to the monsters themselves. Coromon excels at this, and it’s easy to get attached to the creature design. They have a cohesive theme that fits the game’s art style well.
Coromon will keep you entertained for quite a while, too. There are three different variations of each creature that correlates with their stats. A perfect Coromon stat-wise has a unique coloring, and one with close-to-perfect stats has another coloring. If you’re a collector, then there’s a lot of searching to be done, and that's on top of everything else the game has to offer.
One unique thing about Coromon is that it’s easy to tailor your creatures to your own team. There are stat points that you get upon leveling up, and you choose which stat to put them in. So, if you want a hyper-tank on your team, you can make a variety of creatures fit the role. This gives you more freedom in creating a team than many other monster-taming games do.
Overall, Coromon will scratch the Pokémon itch that some PC players have. It’s easy to get drawn into the game, and the freedom to play however you want is an appealing trait that Pokémon games may want to take note of.
You can get Coromon on the Epic Games Store.
Ooblets
On the surface, Ooblets may not look like a Pokémon-esque game, but it’s actually got a few different features that mirror the series. It just has a bit of a whimsical twist to them.
The characters in Ooblets have the same wacky, tacky feel that many of the characters in Pokémon do, but with a bit more pizzazz. It’s full of pop culture references that will have you cracking up, and the game itself has so much personality it’s hard to not like.
The premise of this game is to grow creatures and assemble them in teams for dance battles. These dance battles progress the story, and you’ll find yourself having dance-offs with wild creatures, friends, and anyone else who gets in your way.
These dance battles are card-based, and each Ooblet will give you specific cards in your deck. You’ll work on rhythm points, and the Ooblets have different ways of getting the right amount of points. Oftentimes, you’ll need to switch up your team of adorable dancing creatures to get past whatever’s in your way.
In order to plant a new creature, you’ll have to find its wild form and make it like you, beating it in a dance battle to cement the deal. Each creature has two special colorings for collectors to chase.
Getting these feisty creatures to like you isn’t always easy. You may need to offer specific fruits and vegetables or cook the perfect sugary treat to get them on your side. Along with these creatures, there’s also a town full of eccentric people to get to know as well. In addition, you’ll choose a club to join that depends on your favorite aesthetic, and that club picks your “starter” Ooblet in turn.
Your creatures can also help you run your farm, creating different goods to sell, as well as performing random tasks. You’re also free to decorate your home and farm with a plethora of different items, which make the game feel like a farming sim mixed with a monster-catching RPG. There are also a lot of ways to customize your character that match the aesthetic of the game. All-in-all, every single one of the game's features feel fully fleshed and enjoyable.
Ooblets is a wacky adventure that puts a spin on the monster-taming genre that feels fresh and unique. You can get it on the Epic Games Store.
Alekon
If you’re looking for a game that styles itself after Pokémon Snap, then Alekon is the game for you. In Alekon, you take pictures and meet creatures called fictions. Your pictures are judged based on the fictions' poses in your photos, as well as your distance from the target and the overall quality of the picture. There are tools to help you capture better pictures, like donuts that you can throw to attract your targets in order to get cool pictures of them.
That’s not all—every fiction has a unique quest it’ll ask you to do in the overworld. Some of them involve making music or throwing donuts, but they’re all unique to that fiction. Each fiction also has its own type, like the Fiction of Curiosity and the Fiction of Grumbling.
You’ll even get to know the fictions you meet along the way. They talk and have full personalities that are full of witty dialogue. Taking pictures of all of them is as fun and relaxing as Pokémon Snap, but the added bonus of getting to know the creatures gives Alekon a depth that Pokémon games don’t have. The picture-taking is just difficult enough to be interesting—often requiring multiple explorations of the same area—but not so complex that it feels like you’re missing something everywhere you look.
The fiction’s designs are pretty great, too. While some are cute, others are sly, and they fit the atmosphere of Alekon well. With over 50 fictions to meet and befriend, there’s plenty to do without the experience feeling never-ending (a common pain point in the genre for anyone who likes to 100 percent games).
The end goal is to restore Creativity, which you get by taking pictures. Your score on the picture equals how many points you get, and these points will unlock more locations in the game. Once you’ve gotten enough creativity, you can get to the last area, which is supposedly the home of the Fiction of Creativity, Alekon.
This is an ideal title for those who want a laid-back game that’s reminiscent of Pokemon Snap. Alekon is available on the Epic Games Store.
Monster Harvest
Pokémon meets farming sims in a mashup called Monster Harvest. Players are tasked with growing Planimals, a term for animals that are born from seeds. Using Slimes, players can mutate their crops to become Planimals, and they’ll follow you around and fight battles for you.
There are over 70 different Planimals to grow, and they’re mutated from different color slimes, as well as slime combinations. The various seasons—which are "dry," "wet," and "dark" respectively— also affect what Planimal you’ll get. The little guys follow you around, and they make for cute companions. There’s also a town full of people to befriend. By becoming closer to the townspeople, you can get discounts on items at shops, which can be really valuable as you progress through the game.
The graphics are a mix between 2D and 3D that gives the world a bit of depth while still holding on to the nostalgic feel of pixelated sprites. This works well with the Planimals themselves, and it feels like a return to the original generations of Pokémon.
Monster Harvest’s combat is a bit odd. It doesn’t get as complex as Pokémon, Coromon, or even Ooblets. You simply choose from a few options that don’t have the elemental interactions of other monster-taming games. However, if combat isn’t your main focus, then this won’t be too big of a problem.
Combat does reward you with more seeds for more Planimals if you win, and this is a key way to uncover new creatures. Unfortunately, if you lose a battle, then you lose your Planimal forever. However, there’s a unique system that allows Planimals that lost in battle to be used as fertilizer for the farm. While this brings up a ton of questions about how this works, it softens the blow of losing Planimals, albeit in an odd way.
For farming sims fans, or even fans of games like Slime Rancher, Monster Harvest is a fun game to play on PC if you’re trying to find something like Pokémon. You can get Monster Harvest on the Epic Games Store.