If you ever wanted to play an off-brand mashup of Pokémon and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with just a dash of Palworld then, weirdly enough, the perfect game for you has just dropped a trailer. The subtly named Pickmon is an upcoming open-world survival crafter that boldly asks, “what can we get away with while Nintendo is busy with other lawsuits?”.
Here’s everything we know about Pickmon, including a look at its gameplay, developer, release date, and more.
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Pickmon’s trailer
The trailer for Pickmon is truly jaw-dropping. So many elements of recent Nintendo games are stuffed into just the first few moments, one can only be in awe of Pickmon’s audacity.
Right off the bat, a Link-like character–complete with a blue tunic, quiver (despite not having a bow), and blond hair–leaps off a cliff with a glider, in an almost exact copy of Breath of the Wild’s iconic trailer. He’s accompanied by a small yellow Pickmon, with black tipped ears and a bolt-shaped tail. Hey, I’ve already seen this one!
From there, the trailer shows a sweeping landscape that’s definitely not Hyrule, filled to the brim with various Pickmon. These Pickmon can be caught to help the player, though with a card instead of a ball. Other human characters can be spotted throughout the trailer, including a guy who’s clearly just Roadhog from Overwatch.
Pickmon gameplay
Similar to Palworld, which has had its own legal disputes with Nintendo over similarities to the iconic Pokémon franchise, Pickmon is a survival crafting game, in which players explore an open-world while collecting Pickmon, creatures that are best described as hovering-near-legally-actionable Pokémon. After being caught using cards, these Pickmon can be used in combat or set to work in farms or factories to grind out resources.
Pickmon promises online co-op, though details on how many players can join forces haven’t been released.
Pickmon release date and developer
Currently, Pickmon doesn’t have a release date window. With how much the game is tempting fate (otherwise known as Nintendo’s lawyers), it’s surprising that a trailer was released so far ahead of any sort of release date. It remains to be seen if Pickmon will survive to see a release, but lawsuits haven’t been as slam dunk for Nintendo lately as the corporation would likely prefer.
The developer behind Pickmon is PocketGame, a studio without any other titles on Steam. The publisher is NETWORKGO, a company with a few unremarkable titles over the past few years. There’s not much to judge Pickmon on based on its creators, which may be intentional.
Pickmon system requirements
| OS | Processor | Memory | Graphics | DirectX | Network | Storage | SSD | |
| Minimum | Windows 10 or later (64-bit) | i5-3570K 3.4 GHz 4 Core | 16 GB RAM | GeForce GTX 1050 (2GB) | Version 11 | Broadband Internet connection | 40 GB available | Required |
| Recommended | Windows 10 or later (64-bit) | i9-9900K 3.6 GHz 8 Core | 32 GB RAM | GeForce RTX 2070 | Version 11 | Broadband Internet connection | 40 GB avaliable | Required |
It will be interesting to see what happens to Pickmon as it gains attention across the internet. While Palworld generated good press by introducing the novelty of “Pokémon with guns” and went up against Nintendo’s in a ‘David vs. Goliath’ legal battle, Pickmon seems to be attempting the same thing but sloppier.
Even the very end of their own announcement trailer lists the developer as “Poke Game” instead of “Pocket Game”.
