It’s been only about a month since Game Freak and Koei Tecmo released their slow-life sandbox Pokémon spin-off Pokémon Pokopia, and people are already deep into testing the creative limits of the game’s building features. One such player and solo game developer, going by the name Penggy on X, has come out with a “climbing platformer game” in the style of Only Up! within Pokopia itself, incorporating many of Pokopia’s quirks and gimmicks into the gameplay.
Only Up! was a 2023 action platformer game published by indie developer SCKR Games for Steam. Following a surge in popularity thanks to the game being featured in numerous livestreams, it was abruptly (and permanently) removed from the platform by the creator themselves. Consequently, numerous titles inspired by the viral hit have appeared since then.
To replicate the chaotic, high-difficulty platforming field of Only Up!, Penggy used terrain blocks, furniture and other random objects. While “staying true to the source material,” this allowed Penggy to incorporate the objects’ mechanics and functions into the parkour gameplay, with vine jumps, door-opening jumps and fence mazes as some of the examples shown in the video. While the Only Up! inspired minigame is still a work in progress, it appears that the project is designed and playtested so that players don’t get stuck midway, making full use of Penggy’s experience as a game developer. That being said, we’ll definitely be keeping an eye out for when the full playable version is finished.
On a related note, Penggy is currently developing Match 3 Labyrinth, a puzzle game that combines match-3 and Sokoban mechanics, for Steam.
Pokémon Pokopia is available for Nintendo Switch 2.
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