My first Pokémon game was Pokémon Y, which I played way back in August of 2014. While that does seem like a long time ago now (my, how the world has changed since then), I was more than 15 years late to the party. This means I completely missed out on the pixel-art era of the series (as well as the “Pokémon trade wars” predicted by Nintendo Power).
I did eventually get struck by Pokémon fever (my favorite is still Omega Ruby, and I doubt you’ll ever change my mind on that), and I’ve spent a ton of time collecting (and photographing) those adorable little Pocket Monsters. What I’ve not done, however, is go back and play the original pixel-art versions of any of those games.
But I might not have to, because Coromon is attempting to re-create a similar type of magic. This is a turn-based monster-collecting RPG, with many of the same gameplay systems as the old Pokémon games.
However, a game releasing in 2021 — even a pixel-art game — will typically have a lot of quality-of-life features that were absent in those old Pokémon games from the 1990s and early aughts. This seems to be true of Coromon, as the game’s Features trailer shows off a somewhat robust character creator and difficulty settings (the first Pokémon games with adjustable difficulty were Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, though some argue that the different starters in Red and Blue were intended to function as difficulty modes).
This seems like the best-case scenario for me. Not only can I experience the glory of pixel art (which I love) and Pokémon-style gameplay (which I also love), but all of the creatures will be brand-new to me, which makes discovering and collecting all of them feel more exciting.
If you want to learn more, you can download a demo on Steam or check out the Coromon Features trailer below.
