Pokemon Quest Has Just Hit A Massive Milestone

Well, that didn't take long: though Pokemon Quest has only been available for a couple of days, it's already turned into a big success for the Switch. In just two short days, the game has managed to hit 1 million downloads, which certainly isn't anything to stick your nose up at. While the fact that the game is free is probably a big reason why it has found instant success, the Pokemon brand has undoubtedly helped drive downloads.

This success is interesting, because the only things Pokemon Quest has in common with mainline Pokemon games are its name and characters. Pokemon Quest is vastly different from pretty much every Pokemon game we've seen before it, from the way it simplifies progression to its unique art style, which renders the Pokemon in blocky models reminiscent of Minecraft.

The news was shared by the Poke Times Twitter account early this morning. The big question now is whether or not Pokemon Quest can keep people playing. The game seems to take heavy inspiration from mobile games with its energy cooldowns and its microtransactions, and indeed, it's scheduled to come to iOS and Android later on this months.

Pokemon Quest tasks the player with searching for loot on Tumblecube Island. New Pokemon can be attracted to your base camp and subsequently recruited to your team by cooking up special dishes with ingredients you find as you embark on different missions, and Pokemon can be powered up through the use of Power Stones that drop when you defeat particularly difficult enemies.

It's nowhere near as in-depth as standard Pokemon games, but maybe that's just what the franchise needs. At the very least, this announcement shows that Pokemon fans are willing to give it a try, but whether or not it'll be a big money maker for Nintendo remains to be seen. Have you been playing Pokemon Quest? If so, what do you think of it? Head down to the comments section and let us know!