Released Pokémon Champions- Demo available!

Pokémon Champions:
A journey like no other, which you can download here

​

Pokémon Champions is a fangame inspired by the likes of fabulous genre-breaking releases like Pokémon Bushido and Pokémon Nightshade where the goal is not to travel the region and collect "all the badges" but instead to create a unique experience distinct from other releases of its kind. Champions will still feature a prominent battling focus, but the setting for your battles will be much different.

• Play as Mite, a 15 year-old boy who grew up in outer Galar, inspired by radio talkshow heroes of his time. Mite will frequently talk on his own, and has his own goals and motivations. Experience the world through his eyes, and see what training Pokémon really has to offer.​
• Explore the Lumio Isles, an island chain owned and maintained by a mega millionaire by the name of Richmond Briggs. Each chapter of the game will introduce a new island for you to travel through and explore.​
• Discover the charming and entertaining story that each islands presents, packed full of memorable characters and lighthearted humor.​
• Participate in the Lumio Cup where your battling abilities will be put to the test against other trainers from all across the region- many of which have more experience than you!​

The story:
​

Throughout Mite's life, even as a child, life was difficult. Money was hard to come by, and living out of an abandoned building was just more to add onto the pot. Moreover, with a lack of parental figures in his life, Mite was left to find inspiration in the many voices that transmit over the radio waves. One of those voices was Richmond Briggs- a man who has claimed to climb up from the bottom and work his way from the top- the perfect rags to riches story. Aspiring to be just like him one day, Mite continues pushing forward.

After being defeated by the world time and time again, Mite finally receives the opportunity of a lifetime. Briggs is hosting a worldwide competition, hosted on his very own island chain- the Lumio Cup. And the prize? The title of heirship to the entire Richmond fortune. Mite simply can't let a gift like this pass him by. And so, with hope in his heart for the first time in 15 years, he boards the nearest ship to Lumio and registers for the tournament. The tournament, of course, requires all competitors to leave their previous Pokémon by the wayside throughout the duration, but that isn't too much of a problem considering Mite had never even held a Poké Ball before.

Each round of the cup has trainers traveling to a new island in the chain, catching whatever Pokémon may be present there (with certain limitations set by the Trainer's Guild), battling other competitors to gain the experience and levels necessary to win. Afterwards, they will be called back to the central Richmond Dome for a 1v1 elimination battle- the winner gets to continue onto the next round.

Each island contains its own small story, with unique characters to meet and fun maps to explore. Every design and dialogue box has been crafted with care, and I do hope that the writing will be one of the highlights of this story.

Features:

Right right, of course, the part that you're actually here for. Pokémon Champions features:​

• Custom-designed Fakemon, to be included in the next version of the game!
• Following Pokémon! (Obviously.)
• Unique battle backgrounds, trainer classes, Pokédex entries, shiny pallets, movesets, TM and Tutor lists, and UI.
• Customizable Pokédex entries!
• Unique move animations that, after some time has passed, will be public assets available for community use.
• New regional forms, such as Luminian Hoothoot or Spinarak, some of which will feature their own regional evolutions.
• Quality of Life Features such as party renaming, wild item drops, and centralized service providers.

You can download the game here!
​

• We also have a Discord server where you can join and discuss your progress as well as give suggestions for the next release.​
• If you're interested in helping out the project, please read this thread.​
• The game has a fully written guide that I try to keep pretty updated. This includes trainer levels, teams, sidequest guides, item locations, and Pokemon locations. You can find the guide here.​

Credits:

Spoiler: Core Team Credits

Core Team Credits
NocTurn: Lead developer, mapper, animator, OW spriter, etc.
Ender: Regional variant designer
Robofish/Mechamudskipper: Spriter for the battle backgrounds, Mite, the Quartet, Nightingale Noctowl, and others
TechSkylander1518: Lead coder and the Spotlight script
PurpleZaffre: Responsible for many awesome script additions and fixes, as well as being a great friend
AceGamerAndy: Mite Running and fishing OW as well as a few smaller OW fixes
Spring: Easter Togepi sprites
Pantastic/Monika~: Clive OW Animation
PurpleZaffre, SamdeMan123124, Spring, Mew: Awesome playtesting team

Spoiler: Script Credits

Script Credits
Pokemon Essentials:
Maruno, Flameguru, Poccil (Peter O.), and associated

Marin Scripting Utilities, DPPT Pause Menu, and Overworld Shadows:
Marin

Item Find:
Boonzeet

Location Signposts:
PurpleZaffre

Overworld Pokémon Script:
Golisopod User, Help-14, zingzags, Rayd12smitty, mej71, PurpleZaffre, Akizakura16

Always-On-Bush Script:
KleinStudio and derFischae

IV Star Display, DPPT Options Screen, and Named Speech:
Mr Gela

Luka Utilities and Modular Title Screen:
LukaSJ

Wild Item Drops:
shayminhedgies

Battle Introductions:
bo4p5687 and TechSkylander1518

Nickname from Party Menu:
TechSkylander1518

Newly Caught Additions Script:
The Reborn Team, and Techskylander1518 for the additions made

Customizable Pokedex:
Techskylander1518

Egg Hatcher Script:
Kyu

DexNav Script:
Phantombass, Suzerain, Nuri Yuri, Marin, raZ, Vendily, Savordez, PurpleZaffre

Friendship Checker:
Alaguesia

Spoiler: Asset Credits

Asset Credits
Overworld Pokémon Sprites:
PrincessPhoenix, LunarDusk, help-14, csandoval, 2and2makes5, MissingLukey, Zyon17, Kymotonian, cSc-A7X, Pokegirl4ever, Fernandojl, Silver-Skies, TyranitarDark, Getsuei-H Kid1513, milomilotic11, Kyt666, kdiamo11, Chocosrawlooid, Syledude, Gallanty, Gizamimi-Pichu

Gen 5 Backsprites: Dreadwing93

Exterior tileset assembled with contributions from: Princess-Phoenix, Zeo254, Magiscarf, Kyledove, Hek-el-grande, Gallanty, PeekyChew, Morelockhater, LunaMaddalena, KingTapir
Interior tileset assembled with contributions from: Pokemon Infinity Team, Princess-Phoenix

Regional Hoothoot, Noctowl, Enchantowl, and Spinarak sprites: cubeR

All sprites for gen 6 and beyond: https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=368703

Extra Public Human OW Sprites: Purple Zaffre, Brawlzilla, Kimotonian, KleinStudio, and Neo-Spriteman

Boat Sprite by: Ulithium_Dragon

Battle bar UI: Recolored from https://eeveeexpo.com/resources/33/

Okay one more time, you can download the project here and the official project Discord is here. Thank you so much for playing my game!​

 

[KrisNightmare]

This looks really cool! Congrats on releasing the demo Turner!

 

[luxdiablo]

Congrats on the release Turner!

 

[Reintendo0]

hey hello i have today started a new fangame playthrough pokemon Champions is here

 

[Radical Raptr]

Congrats on the release! I took some time to finish the demo and I'll leave my thoughts here for you.

I might as well start off with some praise - I think the game is very visually appealing, its nice to look at and the various areas to explore look very nice and well crafted. That being said, those very same areas are also difficult to look at at times and can be a headache to traverse as everything begins to slowly look the same. Its a mix of the tiles and your mapping style that contribute to a bit of a repetitive and samey looking atmosphere for much of Highrise Island. Further, the mix-match of tilesets serves to make a more disjointed game when you move from the indoor vs outdoor, though this may be due in part to the saturation and color palette used in each. Speaking of Indoor, one thing that really bugged me was the over abundance of trees in a lot of the indoor maps, which made it look as though you weren't sure what to do with the design, and decided to load it up with trees - in small amounts it looks nice, when every other map has a wall of plants it looks more distracting than appealing.

Another thing I was a bit disappointed in was the lack of custom graphics for much of the UI, instead using stock essentials. while not bad in its own right, it was a bit disappointing to see when for example you have custom battle bgs.

One note about the battle UI in particular, I found the battle buttons to be very displeasing to look at. The text color and the UI design makes for very poor readability, however I have a suggestion that might help your design a bit:

Doing this not only serves to make the button more distinguishable from the selected vs non selected version, but also makes the font easier to read when its not dark color on black bg. The slight shadow helps to make the font stick out a bit more and make it easier to read. Another note a few people had mentioned to me while I showed off the game was that the buttons being asymmetrical was distracting - take that criticism however you will.

Final design note, the music was very Mother 3, idk if that was the intent but that was the result. Most of it was pleasant, but the wild battle music in particular was aggravating after a while since the bassline was so insistent and repetitive. It was a bit annoying especially when I would encounter a battle shortly after ending one, only to have the music feel like a continuous loop. If the song had a bit of a buildup reprieve it would help make it less grating.

Now on to the game itself - I have to ask, why is the protagonist a named male character rather than a standard Pokémon player? for whatever reason you might claim to have its nothing but silly. You can claim that this is just how the story you want to tell is written, but forcing a gender and name on a playable character in a game like this is very unnecessary, and the character's gender and name plays no role in the story (except for the one one interaction but I hardly feel that single scene is enough justification.) Its very alienating to players to be forced to play as an OC like this when the series has established a very specific style, and your game does not deviate from that style except in this one regard. I would also like to reiterate there is no story justification for having a male centric character. The game functions exactly the same with a player named character and a female protagonist and it's just upsetting to see a lack of choice in that regard.

Going off the note on the protagonist, its a bit weird how heavy handed you are with the poor aspect to the point where the player's clothes are completely run-down and ragged. I would think that part of the contest would at least be uniforms or some kind of battle issued outfit much like the Galar league has for their contestants. At the very least I hope once the player makes a name for themselves they are able to wear something else lol.

One note I would like to make is that the issue with making your stairs events like you have done makes it so when the player walks up or down the stairs, but they want to turn around or they made a mistake, they have to walk forward before they can go back down or up the stairs which is frustrating and feels like a bug.

As for bugs, I came across the little hiccups one can expect with the Follower script, but I also came across 2 small errors:

After the player interacts with the woman here she moves out of the way, but if you leave and return her position returns to the initial spot and she will no longer allow you to use the machine.

This section of tree is passable, I tried a few other locations and haven't had the same issue so it was just a bit of a hiccup on this particular map AFAIK.

Spoiler for the ending.

Spoiler

The battle was really cool, but the spotlight here ruined the atmosphere and made it harder to see the Pokémon and their designs, specifically the new form fro Noctowl, I was really excited to see it, but the spotlight ruined it for me. I think having the spotlight behind the Pokémon would be much better.

Overall, it was a fun, albeit generic experience. The game was fairly engaging, and having new areas to explore was nice and exciting. The dialogue felt a bit rough in certain places, really stellar in others, and a bit cheesy in a few. But the core game-play element revolving around the tournament style battling was very intriguing to me, despite my initial reservations about it. I sort of expected a bit more from it, with battles leading up to the finale? it was a bit lackluster to just have the single battle. I also felt weird about completing the first Island only to then return to the start to do a battle, it felt a bit superfluous since the goal of reaching the end granted me nothing? I think connecting the goal or end point to the progression would help make the game play loop a bit more secure. However, despite all the minor issues I had with it, I was surprised by how much I really enjoyed the idea of starting on an island, and traveling to other islands and then battling in a big spectacle style tournament, it was really fun and made the expedition of the initial island feel as though I were training for the tournament, so perhaps leaning into that a bit would help solidify the player's motivations.

 

[NocTurn]

Hey Radical Raptr! Thank you for playing my game, and I really appreciate you taking the time to laid out your detailed thoughts. I will be addressing some of your points here:

Spoiler: About the maps

I found your points about the maps becoming same-y and repetitive to be a bit jarring considering I've had many others tell me quite the contrary. I did put in active effort to make each section of Highrise Island different from each other in a few ways, though I always considered the island as one whole rather than as a set of individual maps. For instance, the first section has many small bunched up trees while the second section features more river and water features as well as a very thick treeline.
As for the interior and exterior tilesets clashing- unfortunately this is a symptom of using exclusively public tiles. I could not find a good set of interior tiles to match the exterior aesthetic. However, if you know of any, please let me know and I'll be happy to update them! I do understand your point about too many bushes in the interior maps, I thought it was a nice aesthetic choice to create an organic border but after reflecting I can definitely see how they can become repetitive.

Spoiler: UI

I can understand why you would be disappointed in the lack of custom UI compared to the other wonderful resources this project has to offer. This, however, is planned to change in future large-scale updates. For now, I considered other aspects of development more important. I will also take your comment about the battle bar and color of the battle UI into consideration when I dive back into the UI! I appreciate the mockup you've made for this. I do think I'll be sticking to the asymmetrical button layout, however.

Spoiler: Music

You're entirely correct! I have plans on changing the wild battle music and having it be custom made, however that simply wasn't in the cards for a small-scale demo like this.

Spoiler: Mite as a protagonist

I won't try and debate you on this, you clearly have a stance you've already taken and seemingly have already assumed the reasons of why I made this choice. I don't particularly want to argue over this point, but Mite will be remaining as a single named male character. I'm sorry, but that simply isn't changing.

Oh, and that battle in the demo wasn't the "finale" by any means! There will be plenty more rounds after this one, so if you felt the lead-up was a bit poor, you'll have to trust me that there will be plenty more exciting battles in future releases.


Regardless of our disagreement on certain points, I truly thank you for spending any amount of time playing an examining my game- I'm very thankful for any insight and time others choose to provide to the development process. And I hope my answers were satisfactory!

 

[NocTurn]

Hey everyone! We've updated to version 1.5, with the additions of a new DexNav feature and a friendship checker, along with tons of map changes and a few more interactable events. Plus, more custom shinies! If you started your save on an old version, i.e. 1.4.1 or earlier, simply enter the Richmond dome and talk to the associate to update your Pokegear. And thank you so much to everyone for continuing to make our game an awesome success.

 

[yes]

i'll definitely check it out cant wait for it to be completed too but what are the shiny odds planning to get a shiny starter if not shinylocked

 

[Devinator]

How long is the gameplay?

 

[NocTurn]

i'll definitely check it out cant wait for it to be completed too but what are the shiny odds planning to get a shiny starter if not shinylocked

Hey there! Sorry for taking so long to reply. The odds are roughly 1/400

 

[NocTurn]

How long is the gameplay?

The game lasts for about one hour to one hour and 30 minutes, depending on how much of Highrise you explore and if you decide to do all of the side quests.

 

[yes]

thanks

 

[Aayan Ali]

when will u realease fakemons

 

[lophiiformes]

I personally greatly enjoyed playing! I like Mite as a character, and I enjoyed the dialogue that he has with the other trainers. The spinarak form is pretty cool, and I like hoothoot as well. I did keep getting trapped by the digletts in the cave though ;-;. And there does seem to be a problem with the apostrophes when switching out pokemon, where it appears as just a blank rectangle.

The demo was very fun! I may replay it with a different team :DDD

 

[pokmontrainerdrake]

Mite weird name but still a great game kind of wished there was a daycare but other then that being able to buy your own building would make this game great kind of wished that there was a exp all in it though

 

[Ok-Opportunity8921]

Great Game,I hope someday i will be able to play Full-Release