For this week’s Critical Play, I played PokeRogue, a fan-made Pokemon rogue-like game that has a lot of gatcha and chance-based elements to it. Although it’s a single-player game, I played with a lot of my close friends, and it was such a fun and addicting experience (Figures 1 & 2). However, you may be wondering, how does a Pokemon game have Gatcha elements and is very chance-based? As an overview, I will be talking about the chance-based encounters in the game and the brand-new addition of an egg-gatcha to hatch Pokemon (completely new to any Pokemon game). I will explain these two more in detail later; however, I will argue that these two mechanics make the game extremely addicting because this aspect of probability and randomness feeds into people’s desire to have fun, try new Pokemon, and beat the game with the new Pokemon. It feeds into the genre of a rogue-like perfectly by making people want to continually play again after losing because they obtained new Pokemon that might be stronger and easier to continue the run.
Firstly, I need to explain the premise of the game and how the rouge-like elements fall into Pokemon. In this game, you are constantly battling and leveling your Pokemon up. You begin the game with only the starter Pokemon from each region (from gen 1 to 9) and you can choose your Pokemon to start off with. Then, you go into a wave-based combat where you continually fight Pokemon and have a boss at the end of every 10 waves. Every once in a while, you face trainer battles, rival battles, and even gym leaders. After making it to floor 180, you will begin the Elite 4. Then, to beat the classic mode of the game, you must reach floor 200. However, getting to this point is extremely difficult, especially in the beginning because you only can start off with the pokemon unlocked (which as mentioned earlier is just the starters in each generation). But, this game incentivizes you to keep playing over and over and catch new Pokemon because each Pokemon you catch, you can then start off with that Pokemon in your next run-through. So for instance, if you were to run into a legendary Pokemon for instance (such as MewTwo), then you can start off with that Pokemon the next time you play. This already showcases the game of chance because catching a Pokemon and running into a “good” Pokemon is all RNG. However, this is mostly the same for any Pokemon game, but I particularly wanted to go into what makes PokeRogue unique from the rest of the games.
Thus, I will dive into the egg-gatcha system (Figure 3). You have three different gatcha machines you can pull from, the Move-Up machine, which helps you get rare egg moves, the Legendary-Up machine, which helps you obtain that specific legendary on the screen, and the Shiny-Up machine, which increases your odds of obtaining a Shiny Pokemon. You can obtain pulls in many different ways: completing a daily run, winning against gym leaders, and getting lucky in the shop-gatcha at the end of each wave (which I would explain more, but this blog is already long enough) (see figure 4). This already incentivizes you to keep playing the game, feeding into the addiction; however, what makes the egg system unique is that you can get multiple rarities of eggs from Common, Rare, Mythic, and Legendary. Each of them has a unique probability to obtain and the eggs are tied to a selection of Pokemon (the most obvious being a legendary egg containing a Legendary Pokemon). When I played, I at first didn’t think it was a huge deal, but this egg gatcha is so fun. Each time I get a new pull, I immediately go to the egg gatcha to pull for my eggs. I eventually got 2 legendary eggs (each one is a 1/256 chance), which got me jumping up and down in excitement as my friends gasped over how lucky I was (figure 5). But this fed into my own addiction, and I ended up playing this game for over 6+ hours in a single sitting with all my friends as we kept grinding classic and getting new eggs and pulling for them.
This is the same feeling I get when I play Honkai Starrail or Genshin Impact (and soon-to-be Wuthering Waves releasing today!). In these games, I love the gatcha system of pulling for character banners and obtaining the characters I want. Getting the 5* pull in these games and just that anticipation as the music and sound effects play to build up anticipation (like what we learned in class on Tuesday) and then seeing whether or not I win the 50/50 on the character I want is always the most exciting part and the reason why I love playing these gatcha games so much. The chance-based elements build up your anticipation and make you want to continually play it so you can obtain the character you want and use that character in the game. PokeRogue is very similar to that because once you hatch a new Pokemon from an egg, you can now use it in a new run. I argue that this gatcha-system feeds into the rogue-like experience perfectly because now with the new Pokemon you hatched, you can play a new run and start off with these Pokemon. So once I hatch the legendary eggs, I will now get to play with the new legendaries obtained at the beginning, making my run much easier compared to only starting off with the starter Pokemon. This egg-gatcha feeds into the rouge-like nature of it, and I don’t know of any other games that do this same premise. I find it completely novel and an amazing way to get people hooked on the game. Luckily, there is no micro-transactions as it’s a fan game and Nintendo would strike it down if the developers made any money off of it. So it’s a more harmless gatcha game to get addicted to, except for the time-sink you put into it.
Overall, PokeRogue is an amazing game that is very addicting due to the chance-based elements in it. I argue that the chance-based elements feed into the rouge-like experience perfectly, enhancing the overall gameplay and feeding into the players’ addiction to the game.
Figure 1: All of us playing PokeRogue Together
Figure 2: Me finding 2 Legendary Pokemon at the same time
Figure 3: The Legendary-Up Egg Gatcha
Figure 4: Obtaining a Egg Voucher to pull for eggs in the shop
Figure 5: I obtained 2 legendary eggs from the gatcha machine
