Pokemon Unite Gets A Surprise Reveal With MOBA-Like Gameplay

Last week, The Pokemon Company hosted a livestream in which it revealed a number of new projects. Most notably, those reveals included New Pokemon Snap for the Nintendo Switch and Pokemon Cafe Mix for Switch and mobile devices. At the tail end of that presentation, Pokemon Company CEO Tsunekazu Ishihara said that he had yet another project to reveal, but that we'd have to wait a week to find out what it was.

Fast forward to today and The Pokemon Company has made that promised reveal, announcing Pokemon Unite in an 11-minute video today. The Pokemon Company is teaming up with Tencent to make this game, so it seems that Game Freak doesn't have much direct involvement with the game. Tencent subsidiary Timi Studios will be handling the development duties on the Pokemon Unite.

So, what is Pokemon Unite? Officially, it's described as a "team battle" game, but put simply, it seems to be Pokemon's take on MOBAs like League of Legends and Dota 2. Players will be split into two teams of five, but instead of pushing down lanes and destroying enemy towers, your goal is to catch wild Pokemon in the field to rack up points. Those points will only be added to your team's score when you occupy one of the opposing team's goals for a certain period of time.

Team battles, a staple of MOBA titles, are still a thing in Pokemon Unite, and the Pokemon you select at the beginning of a match will be able to level up, learn new abilities, and evolve throughout the course of a game. More specifics aren't available at this point, but you can watch the video embedded above to see a show match and get a feel for the game.

At the moment, Pokemon Unite doesn't have a release date, but we do know that it'll be a free-to-start title for Switch, Android, and iOS. We'll keep an eye out for more details about the game, so stay tuned for those.