Time for another one of those quick mobile titles. I figured I’d give this one a quick shot because of how absurd the whole concept was and it’s actually better than I thought it would be. It’s the kind of game that you would need to stick with for the long term to actually get to the end though. Raising a Magikarp is a whole lot of work and it’s set up in a way where you will go through many Magikarps before you actually get one that is strong enough to take you to victory.

The simplicity of the game is part of what makes it so addictive. At the same time, it is clear that they are hoping you will spend money on this game so the grind gets longer and longer as you go on. Before long you will either decide that you want to be in it for the long haul or not. For me, there are just too many hype games to stay with any one title for long but they still did a good job with the title. I made it up to level 25 before calling it a day here.

So the story is straight forward as you raise a Magikarp and work to obtain all 8 Gym badges. In this world, Magikarp is the only Pokemon that is used for battling and so every Gym Leader has one. Whichever Magikarp splashes the highest wins. You then have to fight through a few trainers before the next gym leader and repeat the process. Gym Leader may be the wrong word though, I think the game just refers to them as champions but it’s basically the same concept in the end. You don’t actually control Magikarp during the fights so you just watch it splash. Each fight only takes about 5-10 seconds which is fast and if you lose the first time then you can just skip the animation the second time. You do have to start the tournament from the beginning each time you lose but you don’t have to re-complete previous ones.

The actual gameplay comes into the picture between battles. To get your Magikarp stronger you have to feed it a bunch of berries. They spawn every few seconds and then you tap on them in the screen. Rinse and repeat as you go through the game. As you get stronger you will unlock different training equipment which the Magikarp can use every once in a while. You will also unlock Pokemon who appear in the background to help out. There s even a sub genre for this game, it’s known as an Idle mobile game. So the idea is you just play it for a few minutes here and there when you have time and your Pokemon will keep on getting stronger.

Of course Magikarp will eventually retire and then you start from scratch. Your next Magikarp will always be stronger though based on your trainer level going up as well as his motivation. There is no way around losing at least 100 Magikarp or so as you go through the journey but eventually you will have one that is strong enough to beat all of the leagues. The game itself is effectively dead at this point so once you beat the 8 leagues you would be all done. There is no post game so you can just keep on getting stronger forever. I called it a day after beating 4 of the tournaments.

There’s a lot more on the details side I could mention here but you get the general idea. You have coins and gems to buy upgrades and the game essentially runs on a loop. It may sound a bit overwhelming but once you are playing the game, you won’t think that is the case. It’s a game that has an incredibly good UI so you always know where to go next. They did an absolutely excellent job on this one. I definitely can’t emphasize that enough. There’s not really much of a soundtrack here but the whole thing is going for a really peaceful vibe.

The graphics are pretty solid. Nothing that will rock your world or anything like that but the game looks and feels nice. Naturally there is a ton of replay value here and beating the main campaign will take a long while either way. Pokemon has definitely had some really strong hits over the years and this one is no exception. Hopefully they continue to make more Pokemon mobile titles in the future.

Overall, Magikarp Splash is a lot of fun. Almost deceptively so I would say since the actual sessions are really fast but you want to keep going back in to play some more. You could easily get addicted if you aren’t careful so you should definitely watch out for that. At the end of the day though I tend to gravitate to more story based games in the end. Pokemon Go is really the big exception to that. If you are looking for a fun little game to play though, this is a nice one to have on your phone. There are also no ads at all which is really nice. I always give the developers credit for that on not being greedy.

Overall 7/10