Pokémon Emerald Rogue

released on Aug 22, 2022

Ever wondered what Pokemon might look like as a Roguelike? When you go on an adventure all routes, encounters and items will be procedurally chosen based on your progress into a run. After a certain number of routes you will encounter a random gym leader who will have a procedurally chosen team of their assigned type; as you progress further into a run gym leaders and other trainers will start using more difficult setups for their pokemon. If you can make it all the way to the champion and defeat them, then you will have completed the run! Once you complete or wipe out of a run you will go back to a hub area where you can buy permanent items and catch new "starter" Pokemon to use in the next run. As you progress further into the run, you will unlock more buildings/NPCs in this hub area to use for preparing the next run.


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Mira que no me gustan los roguelike, peeeeeeero

Nice game to have on your phone to play when you don't have anything better to do. The Pokemon formula works wonders with Roguelike/lite mechanics.

A brilliant spin of the classic Pokemon formula. This hack streamlines the experience of a normal Pokemon game, giving you a very satisfying and challenging experience every run. The progression is very fun, the systems in place are genius, and all in all the game keeps you coming back for more. Thanks Pokabbie!

God this hack is so fucking bad. Runs take for fucking ever. The save system is god awful. If you so much as look at this game wrong it will boot you out of your run and make you start over. Trainers in the endgame are stacked with legendaries designed to screw you over because Pokeabbie couldn't think of any better way to make it difficult. Easy difficulty is for piss babies while medium and higher just fucks you over in the endgame.

Deleted it after losing yet another run due to the save system being retarded.

Genuinely amazing spin on the Pokemon formula. The difficulty is just right and it actually makes you think about what you're doing instead of mindlessly clicking A as whatever Pokemon you're using's strongest move tears down the whole game. Each individual run takes too long for my liking though.

8/10 for mere concept and thorough execution. This gimmick makes so much sense, it feels like pokemon was designed to be played like this. Pokemon has always suffered from misguided goals. "Beat the pokemon league", "catch 'em all", "Be the very best". What some pokemon hacks fail to realize is those goals are easy when you're given unlimited combat options and unlimited documentation. On top of that how god damn tedious their game is because pokemon was designed to be an absolute slog to play.

Pokemon Emerald Rogue narrows your focus and limits your options. It bridges the gap between using (basically) unlimited combat items + pokemon to cheese the game and playing on set mode with self-imposed nuzlocke rules.

Lots of things in pokemon are up to chance, and it makes more sense that way. Having a chance to find a legendary or permanent buff instead of always getting that every single playthrough keeps things fair and forces you to try new things. Most people only use what they have always used because why would you not choose the most powerful option? Why would you not make an unbeatable team? If you don't, you're just gonna have to grind your life away to make another.

It all becomes very monotonous. This hack plays to pokemon's own strengths. You have hundreds of pokemon to choose from who are all very interesting with their own mechanics, randomize the pokemon to prevent them from using the same party. This also helps you become familiar with each pokemon's traits so when you face a pokemon you've already used, you don't need to look it up or guess. Force the player to adapt instead of feeding them the same experience over and over is what pokemon has been missing and what people ultimately chase for when playing vanilla pokemon. You have to go through all these hoops to make the game you want to play. This one just did all the work for you and said "be free".

On top of that, this adds all the features you could ever want without all the logistics. "Where do I get that mega stone? oh great now I have to use these 3 HMs." Or "How do I evolve this pokemon again? Oh great I have to wait for nighttime." Or "I don't want to play gen 3 pokemon, I love gen 4 too much." Or "Great now I have to walk cause I haven't learned fly yet". This is not why people play the game, they play it for the strategy! Strategy is not looking something up and spending hours to get what you want to win, strategy is not having what you need and dealing with it.

And then putting an extra RNG twist so that when you lose, you can just blame it on the game and that keeps you playing because now you avoided the responsibility that you just misplayed it. You keep playing and naturally get better.

The only thing this is really missing is great graphics (like gen 4 or 5) and traversal mechanics that aren't teleporting you to a new map. Something extra to make it make sense, some story, stage design, unique character interactions. Although, as you introduce that, you have to be careful. Making a roguelite means you want to keep repeated interaction to a minimum.