Pokemon Friends might have been one of the most lowkey pocket monster's releases in years - heck, it came and went in the blink of an eye - but it's recently found some notoriety as fans are accusing it of being a 2016 puzzle game, reskinned.
The whole hullaballoo kicked off after Pokemon-centric YouTuber CandyEvie did a deep dive on the Switch and mobile game that sees you complete mini-game puzzles in pursuit of yarn that can then be used to make Pokemon plushies. It's quick and innocent and simple, but the puzzles themselves were eyebrow-raising since most had nothing to do with yarns or plushies. Huh.
CandyEvie then dug into developer Wonderfy's gameography and found a very similar title called Think! Think! from 2016, which included almost one-to-one copies of Pokemon Friend's puzzles, just with normal real-world animals instead of Pokemon. The 24-ish-minute mark in the video below shows off side-by-side comparisons between the two.
Of course, Wonderfy isn't ripping anyone off. The studio made the original assets and ideas almost ten years ago, and is reusing them again here, but it does feel weird to see an official Pokemon game built around mini-games that were never meant for Pokemon, especially since Friends doesn't make an effort to tie it into the unique series either.
"You know I do have to say that it is pretty disappointing that a cute game ended up being an asset flip, but not just because it seems lazy, but also Pokemon has been known to have puzzles in their games in the past," one Redditor commented. "Puzzles at the very least feel like they're part of Pokemon's history and it's just a shame to have no real respect put on it even for a small game such as this."
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