How to play Pokelike

Choose a region, choose your trainer, then pick one of three starters. From there you work along a branching map. Each node is a wild encounter, a trainer battle, an item, a gym leader, or a chance to add a Pokemon to your team. Beat the Elite Four and the Champion to finish the region.

Story runs use one of two rule sets:

• Classic — the standard run.
• Nuzlocke — one ordinary catch per map. Fainted Pokemon leave after victory rewards, and their held items return to your bag. Wins against Silver, Admins and N revive your whole team instead.

Kanto is open from the start. Beating Kanto unlocks Johto, and beating any Story region opens Hoenn, Sinnoh and Unova. Locked regions say what they need on the menu.

The Battle Tower unlocks once you have completed a Story region. Each stage is a climb of nine maps. A stage clear unlocks the next one; a loss still pays out coins for the maps you cleared.

Challenges unlock once you clear Battle Tower Stage 1 (Kanto). They add three rotating formats:

• Daily Challenge — the same seeded run for everyone, reset once a day.
• Weekly Challenge — a harder seeded run with its own difficulty tiers, reset once a week.
• Endless — five-map regions, each ending in an Elite Four and a Champion. It never ends, and your run is kept.

A small daily puzzle on the title screen: order six Pokemon so that every link between neighbours matches. There is one solution per day, and a new puzzle arrives on a countdown. Practice puzzles are available after you finish the daily one.

Runs, records and settings are saved in this browser's local storage. There is no account, no sign-in and no cloud sync, so clearing this site's data — or playing in a different browser or on a different device — starts from a fresh save.

Everything is playable with a mouse or a touch screen. On a keyboard, a button that shows a key hint can be triggered with that key: Space skips a battle in progress, R asks to restart the current run, S opens settings, and number keys pick choices on the screens that offer them. You can turn the key hints off in settings.

Is Pokelike free?

Yes. There is nothing to buy and no account to create. The game is a fan project and is not affiliated with Nintendo, Game Freak or The Pokemon Company.

Do I need to download anything?

No. It runs in the browser, and the whole game is a web page.

Where did my progress go?

Saves live in this browser only. Private/incognito windows, clearing site data, or switching browsers or devices will all look like a fresh start.

Which regions are included?

Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh and Unova, each with Classic and Nuzlocke rules, plus the Battle Tower, Challenges and the daily Pokésort puzzle.