Pokemon Shuffle

[Gogoat Rocks!]

During today's Nintendo Direct, it was announced thata new game called Pokémon Shuffle is to be released. This game is a puzzle game akin to Pokémon Battle Trozei and has you have to shuffle tiles and level up characters in order to capture Pokémon. In each battle, you have 4 Pokémon to choose from, and you need to think of your type advantages. There is no time limit, so you can take as long as you like to study the board. To clear each stage, you'll have to reduce the HP of the wild Pokémon you face to zero within a set number of moves. It also features Mega Evolutions which are used to clear the board quicker.
You have a 10 minute wait between battles if you lose, but you can get in there earlier by paying or using items that have been accrued through gameplay. You can also pay for various items to aid in your gameplay. It is due for release in February 2015 and is free to play but with payments included.

Information from Serebii.net​

 

[brygarde]

That actually looks really cool! I can't wait to play!

 

[Hiatus]

While Pokémon Shuffle does sound interesting, I'm not precisely sure if it's my cup of tea. I had tried Battle Trozei before, but sadly, I couldn't play for too long as I wound up losing interest after couple of hours; if the game's like this, same might happen. However, it's definitely good to see them doing things in their spin-off area, which has been sort of quiet lately, so to speak.

 

[Timbjerr]

To me, it looks like it's basically Candy Crush with a Pokémon coat of paint, right down to being free to play but extra features being available through microtransactions. Don't get me wrong, I love Candy Crush and will probably download Shuffle, but it doesn't look like it's gonna be anything groundbreaking. XD

The bigger picture I see is that Nintendo is finally beginning to utilize the 3DS eShop (and the Wii U's eShop for Codename Treasure) for free-to-play games to win back market-share taken by mobile devices.

 

[acatfrommars]

I agree that the news wasn't amazing, but the game looks pretty good. I haven't played a Pokemon puzzle game since Trozei on the Nintendo DS, and will definitely take the opportunity to download this. Of course it doesn't hurt that the game is free too.

 

[Harmonious Fusion]

Eugh, I hate the Candy Crush business model of "well, it's technically free..."