Pocket Mortys is hilariously steeped in references to the Rick and Morty show and the Pokémon game series. Despite enjoying this game, it didn’t provide enough stimulating gameplay or a compelling story to make me want to play through until the end or spend any money on it.

Graphics

The sprites are in a simple cartoon style made to look just like the show. Walking around has a cute Pokémon Yellow feel; all the Mortys in the party follow behind Rick.

Battle graphics are very limited. There’s a streaky colored background and only three battle animations, one each for attacks, buffs, and de-buffs.

Sound

This game gives a great selection of ringtone material. Several of the show’s songs get polyphonic remixes that are used as background music.

Rick and Morty have some really funny soundbites. Ricks says, “Wubba Lubba DubDub,” when he passes out so that Birdperson will come and rescue him.

During battle, Morty will say, “This is cruel” and “I don’t wanna do this anymore.”

Even though Rick’s wisdom and Morty’s complaints are funny, they get tedious after the fiftieth time you hear them.

Gameplay

I really enjoyed Pocket Mortys, but the first hour or so of play was incredibly annoying— until I came to an entertainingly cruel solution. You start off with your main Morty and gain a scruffy Morty through the tutorial. In order to get more Mortys, you need Morty Manipulator chips, not offered in the store until you build up enough schmeckles.

What the hell is a schmeckle? Well, twenty-five will get you a new pair of boobies, which I would estimate to be worth about thirteen and a half Brebbles – either way, it’s cash monies.

I continually spent my schmeckles on serums to heal my two Mortys since you can’t get back to the healing station without either beating the level’s Rick or having all your Mortys faint. I had no idea how to get chips, and my two measly Mortys weren’t enough to beat the levels.

My problem was I wasn’t thinking like a Rick. Manipulator chips cost 500 schmeckles, and in order to build up the cash stash to buy multiple chips, you have to forgo healing your Mortys. The health of your Mortys is not worth the amount of money you have to spend on them.

Even though this is a freemium game, there are no advertisements nor tricky menus trying to get you to spend money. If you want thirty free schmeckles, you can always watch an ad. The biggest advertisement in the game is the ad-space for Morty evolution that starts off as “hungry for apples”, combines into Jerry’s Game, and ends as a meta-ad for Pocket Mortys.      

Finding and crafting items plays a fairly large role in the game, mainly crafting an item for a side quest to get more items, but figuring out recipes is a huge, annoying time sink. Very little logic goes into the recipes. Some items, like the microverse battery, I figured out by applying my knowledge of the show, but most items were just a matter of plugging in every possible mix of items until I got lucky. Or you can use one of several guides found on the internet.

Replay Value

It depends on what you like. If you’re the type who likes to catch’em all and are always playing on your phone or tablet, then there’s huge replay value. Updates tend to bring in a batch of new Mortys, and levels are randomly generated so it’s technically something different every time.

Personally, I found it really funny and got a few hours of fun game play, but will soon drag it to the uninstall button along with every other game I ever downloaded on my phone. If you want to try it for yourself, you can get it for iOS and Android.