A Cute Little Time Killing App with a Unique Aesthetic
Pokemon Quest cubifies the Pokemon we all love.
I stumbled across this app a few weeks ago, actually learning about it from the official Pokemon website, and being a big fan of the franchise, I thought I’d give it a try, thinking the app’s icon art looked interesting. Its name is Pokemon Quest.
Though the story and interaction of the game is a bit simple, the app itself is a nice little thing to open and interact with for five or ten minutes at a time, maybe during a study break or lunch hour before you need to put it away again. It has that limit where you can only do so many missions before you need to wait 30 minutes or so for it to recharge.
However, what I really wanted to draw attention to is the unique take on the well established characters of the Pokemon world, by making them out of little cubes.
Perhaps inspired by the still trending game with a similar look, Minecraft, this game takes the characters, objects, and backgrounds and creates them out of squares and rectangles with rounded corners. Some could call this gimmicky, since the fact that the Pokemon are cubes really doesn’t effect the story or gameplay at all, but I find that this aesthetic is refreshing, making the app stand out from the slog of others on the App Store. It’s honestly adorable, and honestly it does make me happy seeing some of my favorite characters in this little cubey chibi design.
At any rate, this post isn’t any kind of sponsered or anything. I just thought it was neat and wanted to share about it. I would love to create game assets or even just illustrations with this art style in the future, and I love the whimsical world that the app has build with simple shapes and lovely pastel colors.
The story of the game is you’re an explorer on this cube island, cooking up stews from different ingredients you find. These stews attract wild Pokemon who gather around your little campsite, and you can put on a team to further go exploring. You can train those on your team and they’ll eventually evolve into their other forms.
Even the world selection map keeps up the pleasing square look.
The main game play is on these missions, where your team of three Pokemon go exploring and encounter wild Pokemon which they must battle to clear the area. Each Pokemon on your team has a certain set of moves they can perform and you can either guide them yourself or set it to auto, where your team will keep exploring and battling on their own.
And each time your team finishes a mission, they are rewarded with experience which will help them level up and eventually evolve. They also find berries and other ingredients while out. You’ll also earn tickets which can be used to make the stews cook faster or to buy decorations for your campsite at the mart.
There’s not much else to the game besides these objectives, but as I mentioned, it’s just something cute to do in the few short minutes you may have during work breaks.
