Pokémon UNITE is the League of Legends-style game in the franchise

In a live broadcast made this Wednesday (24), the Pokémon Company announced the Pokemon UNITE, another game in the franchise under development together with TiMi Studios, a subsidiary of Tencent Games. With the same style of gameplay of League of Legends (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena), it will allow crossplay between the Nintendo Switch, Android e iOS and it will be free to start.

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In fact, it's much more reminiscent of the League of Legends: Wild Rift version, which is also intended for mobile devices and should be coming to consoles soon. In this MOBA style, players face each other in an arena, devising strategies to defeat or dominate the opposing team's territory.

Pokémon UNITE has victory defined by points

In Pokémon UNITE, ten players face off, five on each team, with different Pokémon — there is no type advantage in this game (plant, fire, water, etc). The objective is to accumulate as many points as possible by the end of the match, which seems to be 10 minutes.

Points are accumulated by capturing wild Pokémon that appear in the match and depositing them in the team's bases, there are five bases on each side of the map. Captures also yield experience, to level up the player, evolve the Pokémon being played and unlock new abilities.

There's no word yet on which or how many Pokémon will be playable, in total. Gameplay appearances are Charizard, Pikachu, Lucario, Snorlax, Blastoise, Clefable, Machamp, Venusaur, Gengar, and Talonflame. The abilities seem to be in line with what is found in the other games in the franchise.

The game is still in development and there is no scheduled release date. Tencent Games, which participated in the creation, is also responsible for part of Riot Games, from League of Legends, and Garena, from Free Fire.

Pokémon UNITE will be “free to start” and will have in-app purchases, possibly to unlock bonuses, future skins (Pokémon Shiny, perhaps) or more characters for players to choose from. Maybe this is the new competitive Pokémon format…