Whenever a game achieves massive levels of successful it's all but guaranteed that other game developers will come out of the woodwork to rip off the concept and create a clone of the game. Sometimes this can be a good thing, clones can take the original concept and find unique ways to improve or expand upon it. Other times it can be a shameless ripoff that put in the least amount of effort to try and make a buck.
With Pokémon Go’s success, there have already been a number of clones created that follow this same pattern, some are good and make for viable competition, and others are just really bad.
10 Worst: Garfield Go
Garfield is a great character and makes for some funny comic strips, but as a Pokémon Go clone Garfield Go is just boring. In Garfield Go players are tasked with running around collecting treasure chests that can contain things like old cartoon strips of the orange cat’s early days.
Admittedly the game claims to offer real-world prizes for your successful treasure hunting like gift cards, but it seems like these were added to convince people to play the game. If you’re not a Garfield fanatic there really isn’t any drive to play this game and it’s a lot of effort to find old comic strips that you can just search for online.
9 Best: Jurassic World Alive
This Pokémon Go clone is too similar to the Niantic game not to be a ripoff, but it does it so well that players hardly care. In Jurassic World Alive players are tasked with finding dinosaurs in the real world and capturing them.
A unique concept introduced in this game however is the ability to take dinosaur DNA and craft hybrids in a lab. The game claims there’s no limit to which dinosaurs can be hybridized making it an interesting component of the game. It would be interesting to play Pokémon Go with the ability to create your own hybrid Pokémon, but for now players will have to mix and match dinosaurs in this game.
8 Worst: Know Moscow
Pokémon fans were stunned when Russian officials denied the game’s access to their country claiming it was hazardous for people’s health and part of a CIA spy plot according to Geek.com. However Russia saw how popular Pokémon Go was and decided to capitalize on it.
Know Moscow is Russia’s response to Pokémon Go and is apparently awful. Players are tasked with tracking down important Russian historical figures like Ivan the Terrible or Rasputin to learn more about Russia’s rich history, and that’s kind of it. Admittedly it would be a little weird if you had these historical figures battle each other, but even that would give gamers something to talk about.
7 Best: City Spirits Go
Similar to Russia, China instituted a similar ban on their people being able to play Pokémon Go in China. So they created a game that functions very similar to Pokémon Go in that players track down strange and powerful creatures to capture and make part of their team to capture stronger creatures.
This game however has proven to be incredibly popular and has some differences to the Pokémon version. In City Spirits Go players fight in three on three battles and the so-called spirits are dramatically different in appearance from Pokémon, it lacks the augmented reality features Pokémon Go has, but it still uses GPS tracking and walking to find new creatures.
6 Worst: Follow JC Go
It’s commendable the Catholic church wanted to use some of Pokémon Go’s concepts to not only improve the physical health of their followers but also nourish them spiritually, but the game they created comes off a little eerie.
In Follow JC Go players are tasked with tracking down various Catholic saints to add to their spiritual roster. Players aren’t tasked with capturing them, but it does feel a little weird tracking down these religious figures and collecting them like human Pokémon in an effort to find the strongest one of all.
5 Best: Draconius Go
Very much a knockoff of Pokémon Go, Draconius Go is nevertheless a fun game that's great when you feel like taking a break from Pokémon but still want the same gameplay. In this game players are tasked with capturing mythological creatures like dragons, unicorns, and vampires to add to their team to train up and do battle.
One difference in this game is the ability to cast spells. These spells can accomplish a variety of things like boosting your creatures stats or even knocking out the monsters you’re fighting. It sort of feels like the potions and berries from the Pokémon world, but more magical and diverse.
4 Worst: Pixelmon Go
There are a lot of these types of clones with varying names, so for the sake of this article only one game was chosen at random. Pixelmon Go is a blatant knockoff of Pokémon Go that utilizes blocky style graphics similar to Minecraft while introducing Pokémon Go gameplay mechanics.
It doesn’t add any unique gameplay elements and is basically just a re-skinned version of Pokémon Go. The monsters in the game don’t even look that impressive or original, there’s literally a square creature called Blockster.
3 Best: Lets Hunt Monsters
Having just entered beta release Let’s Hunt Monsters is another game coming out in China in response to the Pokémon Go mania. It was created by the publishing giant Tencent known for League of Legends and PUBG.
Their game Let’s Hunt Monsters is described as a cross between Pokémon Go and Cryptokitties. This introduces some exciting concepts like the ability to crossbreed monsters to create entirely unique fighters to join the player’s roster.
2 Worst: Pocket Catch Games
At least with Pixelmon Go style of games the creators made an attempt to create a game that looked like a game. Pocket Catch Games is an example of a developer trying to capitalize on a fad through the least amount of effort possible.
Players wander around the real world looking to capture things like wolves, which are presented in the game by two-dimensional pictures grabbed from a site like Getty and stuffed into the game. Thankfully it’s largely been taken down, but it remains as an example of someone trying to make a buck without delivering any quality to their customers.
1 Best: Orna RPG
Orna RPG steps away from the concept of catching monsters to build a powerful fighting team and dives more heavily into traditional RPG gameplay. After creating a hero players can now wander the real world looking for monsters to battle or items to collect to improve their heroes strength and abilities.
Sort of like a geo-Zelda meets Final Fantasy, Orna RPG borrows a lot from Pokémon Go while using it in unique ways. If you want a break from monster collecting and something with more loot grinding, this is the game to get.