Turning the Safari Zones into Routes (and vice versa!)

[Fossilized_Nerd]

Hi All,

I've naïvely tried in the past to make Pokémon fangames and here I am, a near-25 year adult, trying it again!

That said, the impetus for this thread is an idea I've had in approaching designing the areas to make them feel... "different" from the current 2D titles in the series. I had a thought that to replicate the Wild Area in SWSH and "Areas" in S/V, it could be fun in a 2D environment to turn all the Routes into Safari Zone-style areas! But without the step limits or the Safari Balls.

What do YOU think about what makes a Safari Zone / Wild Area fun? Is it...

• The insane variety of Pokémon in individual areas or spread across a vast area?
• The obstacles to jump around on/over?
• The atmospheric music?
• Variety in escalation and verticality?
• A lack of trainers to battle?

Your answers can include several of the above at once, of course - the most important thing to consider in my eyes is trainers. The Wild Areas have literally 0 mandatory trainer fights aside from rival battles in S/V, and the Safari Zones don't have trainer fights. How would anyone go about adding them to a large area like this?

Grab your friends and bring them along for this - I'd love to see as many opinions as I can. Thanks!

 

[Hexcalliber]

I dont usually use the safari zone much for my catching since it has those limitation that we all know and love. But since you also counts the huge "open world" wild area also, i would say it is the huge amount of different variety of pokemon is the main attraction. Able to see pokemon in their normal habitat and stalking up on them before catching them like in PLA is probably the best part about these types of area. The trainer battles or even the lack of them has never been much of a problem for me, battle is a part of the game, im not gonna be mad if i have more game in my game

 

[MagickaHat]

From my experiences the atmosphere you build through music and graphics makes the wild areas worthwhile. Being able to see and hear the representation of my trainer on an expedition to catch Pokemon from a wide pool of options is simply bliss in my opinion!

 

[Mr. SU]

From personal experience, I only ever use safari zones if there's a pokemon there I really want to use in my playthrough like Kangaskhan or Croagunk in gens 1-4. Modern Pokemon games have done a surprisingly great job with honing more in on the collection aspect of pokemon with you being able to catch fully evolved pokemon in swsh's wild area and legends arceus basically being one big safari zone.

Random encounters just inherently don't work well with safari zones in my opinion, it leaves too many things up to luck and it can be an especially annoying hassle with low % encounter rates. Maybe you could have them roaming about in the overworld. Or you could have a pokemon with a fixed encounter where you have to solve an environmental puzzle in order to sneak up on it and capturing it is your reward. A catching-based fangame sounds quite interesting and unique to me, good luck!

 

[louza]

I agree with this idea, random encounters are not interesting.

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