Pokémon on mobile is something that gamers have been wishing for for years and while Pokémon Go and more recently, Magikarp Jump aren't exactly the sprawling RPGs that people want, they go some way to scratching that itch. However, not many gamers are happy with the new release's ability to actually kill your prized magikarp based on random events.
Magikarp Jump is a game about caring for and training your magikarp to try and have it jump higher than any of the others in the world championships. While it's grindy, freemium gameplay, most people have been happy with that, spending hours of their time working away to be the very best like no magikarp trainer ever was. But the random events in the game aren't going down quite so well.
You see, sometimes the game will offer you a choice. Do you want to dive down and see what that shiny object is? Do you want to jump into the tree to snag that berry? If you do, you may grab a berry, or discovery a diamond, but you might also stumble across a hook or a hungry pidgeotto instead and if you do, your magikarp is carried off and presumably killed.
That permadeath attitude has sent some Pokémon fans over the edge, leading to eulogies on various social networking platforms and a number rage quitting the game over what they consider a very harsh gameplay feature compared to typical Pokémon games.
But that's what Magikarp Jump is all about. It's about starting over, doing a little better than before and then starting again. It's not a game about skill, it's a game of progression, like a slightly more thematic Cookie Clicker. If your magikarp survives to level 20 it retires anyway, so it was going to head off into the great blue beyond at some time or another.
Image source: Ibplayer151/Twitter
