The Art of Nuzlocking: Pokemon on Hard Mode

Pokemon is one of the most successful videogame franchises on the planet. They're a fun set of RPGs that are enjoyed by all ages, but the unfortunate side of them is a lack of difficulty. It's no secret that the pokemon community wishes for more difficulty options. In early 2010, a man named Nick Franco decided to fire up Pokemon Ruby for the GameBoy Advanced, but realized that after playing the game over so many times, it wasn't entertaining anymore. He created a new ruleset for himself and began documenting the adventure in the form of a poorly drawn comic, and thus the nuzlocke challenge was born, A self imposed challenging ruleset where 2 rules must be constant.

1. You can only catch 1 pokemon per route (there's typically 40-60 areas in the game, typically called "routes"), and it has to be the first encounter.

2. If a pokemon faints (Reaches 0 Hit Points), it's considered dead and cannot be revived or used for the rest of the run.

Nuzlocking puts an interesting spin on pokemon games simply because it gets rid of the feeling of repetition. There can be a ton of layers added to the ruleset, like such as duplication clause (The same species of pokemon may show up in different areas, evolved or not, which catching would mean you'd have 2 of the same pokemon species, frustrating some players. Duplication clause allows players to skip that encounter and get a new one) and even things like randomizers, where the pokemon, items, and other data within the game can be swapped with another random piece of game data, making the game wildly unpredictable.

Nuzlockes are a lot of fun, but require a lot of time. They require players to pick up new strategies and use pokemon they might not have before, and are very easy to get invested in. If you have a pokemon game lying around and happen to be cripplingly bored, feel free to dedicate a few hours a day on a nuzlocke and see if you can beat it.