A wild fan-made Pokemon VR Oculus Quest game has appeared! And it might be buggier than a Weedle, but it’s still a giddy laugh.
An Alpha version of Pokemon VR, as the game is simply called, went live this week for sideloading onto Quest headsets.
Pokemon VR Oculus Quest Is Here
This initial release has two main features: the ability to explore various towns with the Pokemon of choice at your side and online PvP Pokemon battling. There isn’t any catching element to Pokemon VR, yet. Instead, you simply cherry-pick a team of critters based on 750 (!) character models all available in a Pokedex menu. You can even set their stats and attack moves there and then.
Then, from the team menu, you can see which Pokemon is first in your team. After that you can pick up a Pokeball from your arm, toss it on the ground and your companion Pokemon will appear in front of your very eyes, complete with a nostalgic battle cry.
And, without anyone to play with, that’s about all you can do. But should you bump into another trainer — the game is a lite MMO with a semi-popular overworld — you can challenge them to an online match. These follow the same template as battles in the mainline Pokemon games; turn-based fights in which you bring up to six Pokemon into combat. Without the ability to train or capture your own Pokemon, it’s a little on the shallow side but there’s a lot of laughs to be had. It’s the closest we’ll get to a Pokemon VR game outside of Pokemon Go, anyways.
Of course, its developers want to take the app further. We’d love to see some other series staples integrated into the game, like the ability to catch Pokemon in the wild and fight with AI trainers, too. There’s also plenty of bugs to iron out; it would always take two or three attempts for us to get online, for example, and the character animations for walking are a little silly to say the least.
You can download the APK for Pokemon VR here, and the developers are currently working on bringing it to SideQuest, too. The game will be free forever, though the developer is accepting donations to help keep the server open. You can find out how to help over on the game’s Discord channel.
Are you going to check out this Pokemon VR Oculus Quest app? Let us know in the comments below!
