A New Pokemon Mobile Game Might Be In The Works

One of the most undying franchises on the market at the moment is the long-running, long-lasting, long-enduring Pokemon. The game series has been around since the 1990s and has persisted for decades, with the most recent games coming out for the Nintendo Switch. Well, there might be yet another game in the works, this time for mobile devices.

According to a LinkedIn update from The Pokemon Company -- the parent company that produces the Pokemon games and handles the licensing for the brand that includes the trading card games, the animated TV series, and other marketing and home entertainment -- the outfit is seeking a principal game designer, or someone to lead the design team for an upcoming game being made by the Pokemon Company International.

The description for the job lists that the designer will work within a team of other designers and engineers, along with artists, producers, and testers on a new Pokemon mobile game. This is obviously something separate from what Niantic Labs has done with Pokemon Go.

The job entails lots of communication with other team members in order to coordinate and create a creative and fun experience that is a culmination of collaborative efforts from individual contributors.

It sounds as if the game is still in the early goings of development since the principal designer will work with other artists and designers to create the UI (which means there's no proper user interface implemented at the moment) and work with product managers to define ideal feature sets for the game. The principal designer also has to work with the director of gaming to define and enforce the vision for the game, and work with producers to keep the design tasks on schedule.

A recurring requirement is the ability to work with user interfaces and designs, along with design management skills, at least five years of experience working on video games or mobile games, and, interestingly enough it reveals that this upcoming title will be running on the Unity 3D game engine.

Now, it's a pretty significant thing that the game is being built on Unity because the way Unity Technologies designed the engine, it's capable of very easily porting projects to other platforms. So, yeah, it's very possible that this could start as a mobile game and potentially end up on the Nintendo Switch down the line.

So far we know that one other game designer is already on board who had a previous stint at Glu Mobile, working on a mobile app based on the rapper Nicki Minaj. But, beyond, that there are no further details on the project.

Since it's so early in development there's no telling right now what the scope of the game will be. If it's pushing for new disruptive technologies the way Niantic did, then expect a two year development cycle at the least. If it's running a much safer design pipeline it might end up on the market in late 2019 or at some point in 2020. If it's designed to coincide with the Switch's recent releases, such as Let's Go Pikachu and Let's Go Eevee, then it may not be in development all the long.

It's still early goings, though, so anything can happen. But, it looks like Pokemon Go will be getting a sibling in the mobile space when it comes to Pokemon games.