'Pocket Mortys' Is An Excellent, Dangerously Addictive Way To Wait For 'Rick & Morty' Season Three

There are few shows in history that have so swiftly garnered as vociferous and loyal a fan base off a handful of episodes as Adult Swim's Rick & Morty.

The quirky, high-concept animated comedy/sci-fi — co-created by Justin Roiland and Community mastermind Dan Harmon — has only recently finished its second season, but the existing 21 episodes to date have already proven to be not quite enough for the appetites of the show's faithful. Indeed, despite the show's run being inherently rewatchable — take my word for it, pretty much every episode stands up to multiple viewings — there is at least another year to wait until we're likely to see season three, so the fandom has been crying out for something, anything, to take their mind off the whole thing.

Enter Pocket Mortys, a free(mium) mobile game heavily inspired by the Pokemon Game Boy titles of yore, released for both iOS and Android systems this week. Given the usual amount of effort put into this sort of content, you'd be forgiven for expecting Pocket Mortys to be a briefly entertaining but ultimately disposable adventure with little to recommend it beyond its association with one of the best shows on television. You would also be wrong. Pocket Mortys is, to the contrary, a surprisingly in-depth, dangerously addictive piece of entertainment that certainly gains at least some advantage from being a new piece of Rick & Morty content as much as it does from being a Pokemon tribute.

The set-up is simple — across worlds, Ricks are being separated from their Mortys, with the reason being quickly revealed that there's some sort of interdimensional tournament being held in which combatants — random aliens, other Ricks, even hapless Smith family patriarch Jerry — battle Mortys against each other for… glory? Shit, it really doesn't matter.

You, as "the" Rick, along with your Morty, find yourself quickly drawn into the Morty battles before being summoned to the Citadel Of Ricks and having your portal gun confiscated by the Council Of Ricks, leaving you reliant on a stationary gateway from where you venture out into the wider interdimensional landscape to capture, battle and hone more Mortys before returning to the Citadel to take on more Council members and kill some time meeting the other Ricks milling about the place.

In each "world", there are three primary objectives to complete: locating a cache of items (it comes in super-handy), defeating the world's trainers, and defeating the world's Rick, in order to obtain a Badge. The more badges you gather, the more Council members you're able to take on for trophies back at the Citadel, and the closer you are to getting back your precious portal gun.

The mechanics of the battles themselves are incredibly similar to the Pokemon games, infused with their own Rick & Morty twist. Thus, instead of fire/water/plant types, Mortys — there are 82 all up, with Adult Swim having released the identities of the first 52 last week — come in Paper, Scissors or Rock type, in all manner of guises from Old Morty (who I affectionately call 'Rick Morty'), Stray Cat Morty and Telepathic Morty to Swimmer Morty, Beard Morty, Red Shirt Morty, Gaseous Morty, Ad Space Morty (replete with 'Hungry For Apples?' sandwich board), Spooky Morty and beyond.

Amid the trainer battles, you'll find wild Mortys roaming about the landscape, able to be battled and caught by way of a special item called a Morty Manipulator Chip, to be applied to a weakened wild Morty with an eye to bringing him into your party and building your collection. You can only have five Mortys out with you at once; any surplus Mortys are held at Morty Daycare back at the Citadel Of Ricks.

The process of levelling up your Mortys can undeniably err on the side of being a grind, but (aside from my own personal tolerance for repetitive slogs, as someone who has spent way too much time playing World Of Warcraft to be comfortable putting a figure on it in public) the game's colourful presentation, Easter egg-filled landscape and inclusion of in-game distractions such as its Crafting function amount to several layers of lasting enjoyment to be had for anyone with even a passing interest in the show.

Indeed, there is continuity-nerd glee to be peeled back at almost every turn in Pocket Mortys. The game's soundtrack, for example, cycles through 8-bit versions of songs heard on the show such as Tiny Rick's Let Me Out and Tiny Rick Song, Goodbye Moonmen (as sung by non-carbon-based antagonist Fart, played by Flight Of The Conchords' Jemaine Clement), Head Bent Over (from season two's Get Schwifty) and even Do You Feel It?, by Chaos Chaos, as heard in one of the show's more devastating closing scenes.

Additionally, there are myriad references to jokes and throwaways from the show strewn throughout the game — for example, Rick will, from time to time, utter one of his "catchphrases" (as claimed in Total Rickall) including "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi!" and "Graaaass-uh… tastes bad!" (Rick's actual catchphrase, "Wubba-lubba-dub-dub!", is saved for when he needs assistance from his old friend, Bird Person), while the in-game currency is Schmeckles, as introduced in Meeseeks & Destroy.

Battles and other interactions are peppered with Roiland's wonderful sense of improvisational humour, with Rick offering up deep musings such as, "We've got some real… Morty stuff… happening here," and "The thing about these Mortys is I… is they keep getting younger, and I keep staying the same age." 

This joyous geekdom is especially evident in the game's Items and Crafting utility, where ingredients and ultimate results include everything from Mr Meeseeks Boxes, Fleebs (for rubbing against the grumbo when making Plumbuses — ahh, you know this already) and tubes of Turbulent Juice to being able to create your own Butter Robot. I haven't figured out what to do with the Butter Robot yet, which is kind of upsetting because it took some pretty shmick ingredients to pull together, but whatever. Regardless, the mixing and matching of ingredients to uncover new recipes is a masterstroke in terms of adding an extra layer of engagement to the game.

For all its upsides, however, it is worth noting that, since it's a free-to-play concern, Pocket Mortys is not without its weaknesses. For the most part, they're wholly forgivable — the occasional spelling error or syntax problem, or the alien "languages" clearly being nothing more than keyboard mashing, that sort of thing — but the game also (unsurprisingly) utilises micro-transactions — that is, providing users with the opportunity to pay real-world money for in-game upgrades — which, yes, is an accepted part of all things freemium but, here, may be dangled in front of struggling players a little more than is necessary.

The micro-transactions in Pocket Mortys come from mobile branded terminals of intergalactic fun-house/arcade Blips & Chitz, with several top-up points scattered throughout each world, sometimes within spitting distance of each other. The game design is such that it can be incredibly difficult (never impossible, but definitely frustrating) to make it through a world's challenges — that is, defeating all the trainers before taking on the Rick — before all your Mortys die (well, "become dazed"). The added challenge is that, once all your Mortys are dazed, you are returned to the Citadel Of Ricks, with no guarantee at all that you'll be returned to the same world you were just in, meaning that — even if you'd completed two-thirds of the world's challenges — you have to start over every time your stable gets wiped.

There is, of course, the in-game currency, but the rate at which a player can acquire their Schmeckles is deliberately stymied, ostensibly to encourage use of the Blips & Chitz terminals. Essentially, one solution is to ply ingenuity, patience, strategy and a bit of luck to make it through; the other is to throw real money at your in-game problems until they go away.

Of all the pros and cons of freemium gaming, this is the one that stands out as the biggest condemnation of the model in my eyes. I would much rather pay a single purchase fee and have to work for my achievements than simply pay someone to help me win the game. (This feeling — and the knowledge of the satisfaction such victories bring — has not changed since I first unlocked 100% of GoldenEye on the N64 after countless attempts at scoring that game's ridiculous Invincibility cheat.)

Thankfully, unlike a lot of its free-to-play, pay-to-win contemporaries (get fucked, Clash Of Clans), the rate at which players are able to accrue their own items and experience never really slows to a total trickle, meaning that it is feasible to progress at a reasonable pace without having to drop real money at Blips & Chitz in the process. Obviously, the pay option makes things easier and faster — that's the point — but, hey, we're not exactly going to be getting new episodes any time soon, so it's not like I'm in a massive rush to finish the game anyway. 

Aside from the gripes against the heavy-handed encouragement to constantly spend money that I don't actually have, however, Pocket Mortys — from its premise to its aesthetic and execution — is a more-than-worthwhile download for casual and die-hard fans alike, and ought to dull the sting of the slow march of time as we wait patiently (sort of) for season three.