Author: Game Infliction

Here are the patents Nintendo and the Pokémon Company are suing Palworld about, according to Pocketpair

Palworld developers Pocketpair have finally revealed which patents Nintendo and the Pokémon Company are suing them about. It looks like they’re focusing on the act of throwing capsular items to catch or release monsters, together with the usage of monsters as mounts.

If you’ve somehow yet to encounter Palworld, it’s a bestselling survival game that takes hefty – some would say, scandalous – inspiration from Pokémon, with players poaching Pokésque critters using magic spheres, and deploying them as soldiers and minions.

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Pokémon TCG Pocket Passes 30 Million Downloads in 9 Days

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket has surpassed 30 million downloads in the nine days it’s been available, developer Creatures Inc. has announced.

Word of the milestone came via the Pokémon TCG Pocket X/Twitter, where the development team thanks players for their support. “Thirty million?! How many packs have been opened, then?,” it asked. “On behalf of everyone working on the game and me, thank you for all your support! Seriously.”

Pokémon TCG Pocket arrived October 30 as a streamlined, digital version of the beloved trading card game. It has players opening packs, collecting cards, building decks, and battling others; a simple formula that immediately proved popular given it made $12 million in four days.

Creatures Inc. is keeping busy since launch as it has already added three events to the game: one focused on collecting, one focused on solo battles, and one focuses on player versus player battles.

The first offers players a free Wonder Pick with the chance of pulling either a Meowth or Chansey alongside event tickets and Wonder Hourglasses, with its second part also released today and runs until November 15.

Next, the solo battle event let players take on a handful of water themed decks for the chance of winning new promo cards including Lapras ex. And a PVP event was later added too, putting badges on the line in true Pokémon fashion.

As you’d expect, players are looking to take the best decks into these events, and Mewtwo and Charizard are naturally dominating so far. One outlier comes via Misty though, whose heads or tails effect is driving many up the wall.

On the collecting front, some players are focused on a conspiracy theory about crinkled corners while most are swooning over mythical god packs that award five alternate art cards in one go. There’s also a secret Mew card hidden in the game that’s not super difficult to get.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

Toads Of The Bayou is Into The Breach but with aristocratic, pipe smokin’ toads (of the bayou)

In all honesty, Toads Of The Bayou could have been several notches less ribbet-ing than its Steam demo ended up being, because its stylised pixel fly-snatchers are just that good. There’s only one of the three characters available in the freebie (one of the others is a toad nun with a shotgun), but he’s got a little cutlass, a flintlock pistol, and a can-do attitude – at least when it comes to either stabbing or shooting things. The game itself is a little bit deckbuilder, a little bit Into The Breach: turn based strategy with perfect information and various tricks you can pull to make enemies hit each other instead of the thing you’re trying to protect. Indulge yourself on the gourmet tray-tray below.

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Random: ‘Nintendo Music’ Is Seemingly Being Advertised On Spotify

Cheeky cheeky.

With the launch of Nintendo Music, fans now have a legitimate opportunity to check out some of the very best soundtrack’s from Nintendo’s storied history. Yes, it’s a bit barebones at the moment, but we’ve no doubt it will be expanded upon significantly in the coming months and years.

It seems that The Big N is pretty keen on newcomers diving into its new app, too. According to a couple of accounts from Matthew Reynolds on Bluesky and user Jolemei96 on Reddit, Nintendo is actually hosting advertisements for Nintendo Music over on the streaming service Spotify.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Pokémon TCG Pocket Adds New Rewards and Missions to Wonder Pick Event

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket players can now participate in the Wonder Pick Event Part 2, which adds new rewards and missions to the game today, November 8.

This second half of the event, which offers players a free Wonder Pick with the chance of pulling either a Meowth or Chansey alongside event tickets and Wonder Hourglasses, runs until November 15. It’s unclear if there will be a Part 3 or if this will wrap up Pokémon TCG Pocket’s first Wonder Pick event.

The selection of missions is simpler than Part 1’s, with players not required to pull a certain number of Chansey or Meowth but instead just Wonder Pick a certain number of times and collect a certain number of Colorless cards.

As for the new goodies on offer, players can now use event tickets to unlock a variety of Meowth themed items including card sleeves, a playmat, coin, and icon. 50 Shinedust is also on offer, and event tickets from Part 1 can still be used.

Pokémon TCG Pocket arrived in October as a streamlined, digital version of the beloved trading card game. It has players opening packs, collecting cards, building decks, and battling others; a simple formula that’s already proved popular given it made $12 million in four days.

Developer Creatures Inc. is busy adding all sorts of events to the game, including not just this Wonder Pick continuation but a solo battle event focused on Lapras and a player versus player battle event too.

This isn’t quite a full competitive mode for Pokémon TCG Pocket but is certainly a step in that direction, and will be the first proper competitive test of which decks are best, with both Mewtwo ex and Charizard ex having dominated so far.

On the collecting front, some players are focused on a conspiracy theory about crinkled corners while most are swooning over mythical god packs that award five alternate art cards in one go. There’s also a secret Mew card hidden in the game that’s not super difficult to get.

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.

The co-creator of magic puzzler Hidden Folks is making a sumptuous, spaced-out tower defender

Could tower defence be the ultimate “it’s Friday and I am here in body only” genre? I haven’t really thought about it before, but Rift Riff‘s effusively laidback crowd control has me pondering those optimal moments in any tower defender when the incoming horde hits the flamer-MG triangle just right, and you can settle back comfortably into the role of clockwatcher.

Rift Riff encourages this behaviour by being nice to look at. Created by a trio of developers including Hidden Folks designer Adriaan de Jongh, it’s a world of spacey, sun-carved mountains, forests and monoliths. The towers resemble the sacred architecture of Monument Valley, and the colour scheme and general ambience remind me of Cocoon. There’s a demo, if you fancy it.

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Apex Legends is revisiting the past, but it should be prouder of its present

Nostalgia, when you think about it, is bollocks. There has never been a better time than right this second – averaged out, and despite repeated attempts to the contrary, humanity has never been healthier, freer, or more enlightened by knowledge. It’s true of games too. For every by-committee platter of passionless map markers, there are thousands of more personal, more creative, more interesting works, all adding to the decades’ worth of great stuff we can still play today.

What isn’t bollocks is the emotional pull that nostalgia, for all its lack of cold, hard reason, still manages to wield inside our warm, squishy brains. Hence, the centrepiece of Apex Legends’ Season 23 update is a mode that recreates the battle royale FPS as it was back in 2019, defaulting back to the original map and weapon arsenal while cutting the 26-strong legend roster to the earliest ten. It’s a Fortnite-style rolling back of the clock, and a passably enjoyable one, but also a reminder that the good old days weren’t always that good.

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PS5 Exclusive Astro Bot Sells 1.5 Million in 2 Months

Astro Bot has sold 1.5 million copies so far, Sony has announced.

As part of its latest financial results, Sony revealed that the PlayStation 5 exclusive platformer sold 1.5 million as of November 3, just shy of two months after its September 6 release date.

Astro Bot, developed by Sony-owned Team Asobi and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, is the sequel to 2020’s Astro’s Playroom and the third game in the Astro Bot series. It launched to critical acclaim, with IGN’s Astro Bot review returning a 9/10. We said: “A fantastically inventive platformer in its own right, Astro Bot is particularly special for anyone with a place in their heart for PlayStation.”

While Astro Bot’s sales aren’t up there with some of Sony’s big hitters (Helldivers 2 remains the fastest-selling PlayStation Studios game of all time with an incredible 12 million sold in 12 weeks), it compares favorably to other recently released family friendly platforms. In Europe, launch sales of Astro Bot were 34% higher than those of 2022’s Sonic Frontiers and 52% bigger than those of 2020’s Crash Bandicoot 4.

To put Astro Bot’s sales success into more recent context, Sega’s Sonic x Shadow Generations hit the one million sold mark on its launch day of October 25, according to Sega. But that game launched across multiple platforms and generations, whereas Astro Bot is a PS5 exclusive. Astro Bot sales will surely continue to grow as we head into the crucial holiday shopping season and gamers look to buy a PS5 or the recently released PS5 Pro.

Team Asobi has continued to support the game since launch with a number of updates that have added speedrun challenge levels and new cameos to rescue. At launch, Astro Bot featured 173 bot cameos from PlayStation games past and present (check out IGN’s feature, Astro Bot: Every PlayStation Character – Easter Eggs, for more).

However, iconic Final Fantasy characters were conspicuous by their absence — an omission fans were quick to pick up on in the context of Final Fantasy’s long-standing association with PlayStation. That means no Cloud from Final Fantasy 7, or any other character from the famous role-playing franchise.

Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Pokémon TCG Pocket Now Has “Over 30 Million Downloads Worldwide”

“How many packs have been opened, then?”.

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket and unsurprisingly it’s already pulling in some absolutely massive numbers across Android and Apple devices.

After reaching a whopping 10 million downloads in its first 48 hours, after just over a week it’s now surpassed 30 million downloads worldwide.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com