Get into the Habit of Untangling Your Mind with Pokémon Friends

1. Making Critical Thinking a Game

Pokémon Friends”, released in July 2025, invites children and adults alike to unwind their minds by solving puzzles alongside Pokémon. The game was developed precisely with that concept in mind.

Reflecting on the app's development, a staff member shared, "Through our work on “Pokémon Smile*,” a habit-forming toothbrushing app, we learned that even tedious tasks like brushing teeth can become easy-to-follow habits when gamified. This time, we set out to create a game that naturally develops critical thinking skills and contributes to children's development through Pokémon.

The puzzles in “Pokémon Friends” originated from Wonderfy Inc, the company behind the educational content for “Think!Think!”, a brain-training app designed to boost critical thinking. By building on that foundation of mazes and puzzles that cultivate skills such as spatial awareness and critical thinking, the team added new content to bring the total to over 1,200 puzzles.

2. Generating Excitement to Solve More

The development team worked to bring out the unique characteristics of specific Pokémon within each puzzle.

The result includes challenges such as connecting the electricity of the Electric-type Pokémon Pikachu in a single line in "Pikachu’s Power Line," and rolling the impressively round-bodied Pokémon, Spheal, in "Spheal Spinner."

To further expand on the theme of "Puzzle it out and untangle your mind," the team added the mechanic of unraveling yarn to create plush. Players can place the yarn earned from solving puzzles into the Plush-O-Matic to craft Pokémon plush.

A development team member with a deep love for stuffed animals handled the designs. Their goal was to make the digital versions evoke the soft tactile sensation of holding a real Pokémon plush, and they explored cute poses that would encourage players to collect them. The team created characteristic yarn texture in meticulous detail for each plush.

Players can use these rewards to decorate their personal Plush Rooms or hand them out to the residents of Think Town, the game's setting.

Regarding the gameplay loop, a staff member noted, " ou solve puzzles with Pokémon, collect plush, and that makes you want to solve more. I think it's great if this leads to a natural habit-forming cycle of thinking for our users."

3. The Every Day "Eureka!" Feeling for All Ages

The game is designed for accessibility, allowing anyone to pick up and play. “Pokémon Friends” automatically adjusts the difficulty of the questions to match the answering speed and progress of the player. This results in a challenging but enjoyable experience for both children and adults.

"When playing with their parents or older siblings, younger children often solve these intuitively faster," a staff member observed, "We truly hope families will jump into the game and enjoy it together."

The team hopes that adults will adopt the habit of deep thinking just as readily as children.

A staff member explained, "According to a survey we conducted*, there are quite a large number of adults who find themselves aimlessly scrolling through social media and watching videos. We really want to help people like that get back into the habit of deep thinking. I myself made playing “Pokémon Friends” after lunch a part of my daily routine."

“Pokémon Friends” surpassed one million downloads within the first month of release. It supports nine languages and is currently available in the United States, Europe, and Asia. On social media, users are actively posting reactions to the puzzles and sharing their personally curated plush collections.

Seeing the reaction online, a staff member commented with a smile, "We're happy to see people feeling the joy in the act of thinking itself."

We will continue developing games that both children and parents can turn to for safe, reliable fun. Even more updates for “Pokémon Friends” are in the works for the future.