Pokemon Friends is free-to-play, unless you want to play

I was already REALLY disappointed in the July 2025 Pokemon Direct (which you can read all about here) but then my youngest said something to me that put chills up my spine. "Can we get Pokemon Friends".

I'm not yucking their yum, it LOOKED like a game a kid would like. Direct simple puzzles gave me that weird brain tingle that young me used to get from an activity book. The chills came from the fact that I know Pokemon and I know what it means when they start to describe something as healthy. They want your money in a big way.

Pokemon Sleep was supposed to be all about getting better sleep until people found out it was an app purposely designed to make you feel crappy about how poorly you slept unless you used microtransactions to take better care of your Pokemon.

So when I saw that Pokemon Friends was designed to "untangle your mind every day" I smelled the scam from a mile off but still, I downloaded it onto my phone first to see what we were looking at. Turned out, I wasn't far off.

Let's turn the game on.

The "...or make purchases together!" excitement is a MAJOR red flag.

Okay, this is sort of a...common thing for games if we ignore that exclamation point. Let's get to the title.

Hold up, is that the Shop button on the TITLE SCREEN?! I haven't even gotten into the game but I can already make purchases? Wild. Let's just ignore that. I'm sure the game is fine without it. Let's get ready to untangle my brain with these clever puzzles.

Mensa members could never.

Okay, that was painfully simple and took up about literally a minute and a half. Maybe, once I get back to the main menu, I'll play again and see if it gets harder. So let's go back to the main menu and...

Pardon?

Wait, I took up real estate on my phone for a game that lets me play about 1 minute of what felt like an old Newgrounds game? Alright, it's a simple game, lemme hop over to the store...

Miss. Me. With. This.

If you're curious what these packs are. One is a pack that makes it so you can replay the game as often as you want every day, despite the fact that the reason it only lets you play once a day is "for health reasons". The other two packs unlock more game modes which would be cute AFTER the game had been out for a while. But $35 for a game that feels like $2 Steam Shovelware?

I get that we need to pay game makers and all that. I bought Donkey Kong Bonanza for $70. I appreciate it. But like, this is NOT a $35 dollar game. The puzzles are so simple that the only health benefits this game provides it the knowledge that if your kid gets stuck you should get them diagnosed. Many of the puzzles are designed to look tough but are solved with, usually, two moves where you just bypass everything.

It's so shallow. This is another app from this company that pretends to have a slew of limitations for "healthy reasons" only to just be an excuse to nickle and dime you at every turn. It's like if you were a parent that limited your kids' tech time but decided to give them unlimited if they skipped out on allowance. What company interested in health would create an app and then give you an out on the healthy bit?