If there was ever a good moment to slip a bargain-bin mashup of Nintendo’s biggest IPs onto gaming marketplaces, it might be right now, as the Japanese entertainment giant gears up to battle the United States government in court over tariffs. Maaaaaybe Nintendo’s lawyers will be too busy filing briefs to notice another Pokémon-esque survival game starring a Breath of the Wild Link-like creeping onto Steam. Yeah… maybe…
Enter Pickmon, a newly revealed “multiplayer open-world survival crafter” from developer PocketGame and publisher NETWORKGO, the latter of which previously released the obscure fantasy title Hainya World. For a game so egregiously ripping off Nintendo properties, hand it to PocketGame for launching a trailer ahead of an unannounced release date! That takes guts.
According to its Steam page, Pickmon players will “dive into a vast, uncharted continent filled with ancient civilizations and mysterious creatures called ‘Pickmon.’” Surprisingly, players will team up with the monsters to fight enemies, gather resources, farm land, and build what the developers describe as sprawling “industrial empires.” So you get a little Palworld in there, too.
The twist, for any of Nintendo’s lawyers who are reading this, is that you use cards to tame the beasts. Thankfully for PocketGame, Nintendo does not own Yu-Gi-Oh.
