Pokeclicker Review - Is It Worth Playing?

Updated:

16 Oct 2023

What is Pokeclicker?

Pokeclicker is a fun incremental game for all ages, whether you are a Pokemon fan or not! It’s a game that fills up your free time and allows you to pursue your Pokemon Master dreams! Catch Pokemon, customize your profile, earn achievements, mine for items, farm for berries, complete quests, hatch eggs, and connect with others through the game’s discord! It’s truly the game that is one business deal away from becoming an official part of the franchise it's based on.

The game was released sometime back in 2016 and created by Isha Dijicks (IshaD), where it was originally based around the Kanto region before getting completely rewritten to include more regions and new content with the help of Aegyo, BaineGames, Qubit, and dennism1997 in June of 2017. IshaD eventually announced his permanent departure (citing his reasons being community pressure and schoolwork) on September 4th, 2020, and handed the role of lead developer to RedSparr0w (who joined the team around 2018) that same day.

When the game first launched, there were a lot of good reviews for the game, though with some critiques on how simple the game was back then and how there was little to do after completing the main run; the time it took to complete the game ranged from somewhere between a few days to a full week. Despite this, when the devs expanded on the game more its popularity surged. Every update the game got brought more and more people to check it out and enjoyed it very much. According to Google Trends, in the last twelve months, at least fifty people have searched for the term “pokeclicker,” meaning there’s a large amount of people who want to play the game.

Pokeclicker Story

Basic PokeClicker Screen, Nighttime version; not sure if the text displayed due to having the game downloaded to the computer or not.

The story of Pokeclicker is straight-forward: you start in the Kanto region and pick out a starter Pokemon, follow the tutorial to understand the basic gameplay, battle and catch Pokemon to earn Pokedollars and Dungeon Tokens respectively, explore the region to earn badges, hatch Pokemon eggs, and complete quests to earn achievements. Battle the region’s Gym Leaders to earn badges to increase your Pokemons’ levels and catch all the Pokemon native to that region to move on to the next one.

Pokeclicker Gameplay

Image of PokeClicker Profile, which contains all the necessities to customize the profile.

Watch the Gameplay of PokeClicker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-C4KXBfO8A

When you open the game, you don’t start customizing your profile until after finishing the initial tutorial, where you can click on the Start Menu in the upper right corner of the game and select the “Profile” option listed. Upon clicking it, you can change your name, what Pokemon you want to display, whether the Pokemon displayed is Shiny or not, the text color, the Trainer depicted, and the background, as well. There are quite a lot of Trainer icons to choose from, but the combination you eventually go with is up to choice.

There aren’t any rankings in the game itself, but, the PokeClicker Discord has a feature where when you go to the #bot-commands channel and type in /top, you can select what to search for and see the top 100 of that category. This is optional, however, as the PokeClicker Discord offers drastically different things; you can play the game and not be part of the Discord, and you’ll still have a great time playing.

The game is straightforward with what it can offer; after following Dr. Oak’s instructions, picking and choosing your Challenge Modes and Starter, you begin your Pokemon Journey. Battle Pokemon and catch them to increase your Pokemon and Clicker Attack, travel through the many routes available to find more Pokemon, explore dungeons with the Dungeon Tokens you’ve earned from catching Pokemon, buy Pokeballs and items to help catch more Pokemon, customize your catch settings, battle Gym Leaders to increase your Pokemon Level, and play the minigames available to earn some useful items. Collect all the Pokemon variants as well for more achievements and attack power; each new Pokemon you catch increases your click attack by a bit, with Shiny Pokemon increasing your click attack by 50% the rate of what a non-Shiny Pokemon can offer. The world is large, offering all the Pokemon regions as seen in the anime. Once you’ve completed a region, you can move on to the next one; you can go back and explore previous regions if you have something you need to do! The NPCs are quite funny, filled with useful tips, tricks, and are helpful during certain Questlines; the dialogue from the NPCs brings a smile to your face upon reading them and makes the game a pleasant experience for new gamers.

PokeClicker is a game that’s always updating, so any flaws the game has are always taken care of when the game updates. New features tend to be added with each update, and while some of those features don’t work the best, the bugs present are always taken care of promptly. This, combined with the nostalgia and love attached to the Pokemon franchise as a whole, makes this game replayable for people who’ve already played the game. Checking out the new features, such as the locations and Pokemon added, makes this game more interesting with every update it receives.

PokeClicker Combat

PokeClicker Combat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20X2Ih4IOJ0

The combat system boils down to catching Pokemon to fight other Pokemon and clicking on them to increase your Attacks and win against more Pokemon. You can use your collected strength to fight against not only wild Pokemon, but also against Gym Leaders, NPC Bosses, and the big fights, such as the Indigo Plateau and Pokemon Leagues. Beating the Gym Leaders allows you to increase your Pokemon’s max level to 100, while earning you a badge to progress further into the game.

The player ca make their Pokemon grow stronger with other methods, not just by leveling up. Players can use the Hatchery feature to hatch their Pokemon so they grow stronger (with the Hatchery Helpers making it so that they’ll automatically hatch Pokemon that match the statistics you set for them), along with items such as Proteins, Rare Candy, and Calcium. As mentioned before, catching Shiny variants of Pokemon increases Click and Pokemon Attack a little.

There’s no real combat or weapons system, as most clicker games are based on clicking and automatic work, though that doesn’t stop the game from being engaging. The sound effects and combat animations are top-notch, and even if you don’t like the sounds, there’s an easy way to fix that. Go to the Settings in the Start Menu and look for what sound effect you want to change. If you want to turn a noise effect off, that’s perfectly fine! Just click on what sound effect you want to turn off and save your changes. Or, if you don’t want to go through all that, just click the sound icon next to the Start Menu and all the sounds will be turned off! You can have a silent Pokemon Journey in just one click. The combat animations may be simple, but they work to display what’s happening. Clicking on the enemy Pokemon lowers their health, and the health bar displayed just below it goes down with each click; once you’ve garnered enough Pokemon, you can easily take down enemies just by having the Pokemon attack them! No clicking is required!

PokeClicker Quest System

The game is mostly free play, with a loose plot that the player can choose when to follow, however, there are things to do while grinding away at Pokemon and leveling up your stats: Quests! There are ten Quests the player can do per day, ranging from growing Berries and earning Farm Points to catching a certain number of Pokemon and a certain type of Pokemon as well. Upon completing these Quests, you earn Quest Points, which can be used to purchase Items integral to moving forward in the game, Pokemon that can only be found in stores, and Eggs that can be hatched into Pokemon you wouldn’t be able to catch otherwise (i.e. The other two Starter Pokemon).

While some may find this to be tedious work, it’s oftentimes a great alternative source of income. Quest Points can be used to purchase one-time buys (Items), multiple-time buys (Masterballs), and used to pay for the services of Hatchery Helpers and Farm Hands. There are also Questlines that take the player around the Region or even multiple Regions; these Questlines can be Season Questlines, where you may be able to find exclusive Pokemon native to that Event, or activated by accomplishing the right qualifications to perform the Questline. The game recently updated to where you can pause during a Questline if you want, and you can keep working on it should you choose. Not only are Quests a great way to perform desired actions but you can also find exclusive Pokemon this way!

PokeClicker Graphics

Image of a Rattata getting captured by a normal Pokeball. Pretty good Catch Chance.

PokeClicker Graphics: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=if3JOGKbWeg

The graphics in PokeClicker are amazing: while the art style mainly relies on pixels, it’s very reminiscent of older Pokemon games where the pixels were very noticeable and it wasn’t easy creating life-like figures and perfectly-shaped Pokemon like it is in the present. The graphics are stunning, and whenever there’s animation, there’s hardly any lag or delay when it loads; the animations (mainly used whenever a Pokemon is captured or ready to hatch) are always cute and done in a way that shows the people behind it knew what they were doing.

While the animations aren’t realistic, they convey what’s happening to the player effectively.

PokeClicker Developer

As mentioned in the “What is PokeClicker?” section of the article, the game was initially created by Isha Dijicks (IshaD) with the help of Aegyo, BaineGames, Qubit, dennism1997, and RedSparr0w when he joined the team. When IshaD left and handed over the lead developer role to RedSparr0w, who’s been in charge of the game ever since.

The game is still a work in progress, as it’s been receiving updates to handle all of the bugs or gaps in the programming. The team behind PokeClicker listens to the community on Discord and goes through the proper steps to take care of the issues in the game. The updates are irregular, as it takes time to work on the source code and fix whatever’s wrong. However, this does not deter the fact that the developers work hard to improve the game and are always keeping an ear out for any issues that may arise; if the updates themselves forget to cover something, the team always updates the game to fix that error.

PokeClicker Price

Since the game was first released online, there’s no price tag on accessing the game. It’s free for all to play, whether they want to commit to the game long-term or just for a passing fancy. The game also has a downloadable version on Github, where you can play the game on the computer and not have to use your browser to play; this is especially useful when there’s no internet available for an unspecified amount of time. Thankfully, there are no game elements where you need to pay for something you want, not even when downloading the game on the laptop.

FINAL VERDICT: 9/10 - The game is still being worked on, but it’s great to play!

Pros

A free and easy way to play a Pokemon game without buying any of the consoles or games necessary
Have fun with a non-linear gameplay style where you can spend less time traveling for Pokemon and more time grinding
Idle game fans and Pokemon fans alike can learn about each other’s worlds and develop new, exciting interests.

Cons

Every 12 hours of playtime, you’ll need to download a backup file to your computer.
You need in-game currency to access places like Dungeons and the Safari Zone.
For desktop versions of the game, whenever an update is available, you’ll need to update your version of PokeClicker to the current version.