Pokémon Unite adding new Squads feature, Space Gengar in new season

September 22, 2021

Pokémon Unite finally arrives in its natural home on mobile on Wednesday, and it’s bringing with it a few new neat bits and bobs. There’s a new battle pass called Galactic Ghost 094 that’s adding space-themed items to the game, the arrival of Mamoswine and Sylveon, and a new feature called Unite squads, making it easier to find “like-minded” teams for playing the MOBA-ish free-to-start game.

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Unite has been ticking along very nicely on Nintendo Switch since it released in July this year, but of course it’s on electronic telephones where a free-to-start online battle game will find its squillions of players. That becomes a reality tomorrow, Wednesday 22, and of course the moment is accompanied by a raft of new inclusions.

The new battle pass, Galactic Ghost 094, is the big seller here. Space strikes me as the least explored area of Pokémon, despite monsters like Deoxys, Cleffa, Lunatone, Staryu, and so on. While it’s unlikely the game will be adding anything significant to the lore, it might be fun for them to at least hint at the origins for some of the more mysterious beasts. Various spacey items your trainer can wear will be available for those who complete missions, and of course there’s more available to those who fork out for the premium pass.

Also arriving are the long-promised Mamoswine and Sylveon, as playable characters for your roster. There’s also to be a special mission reprising the Switch launch’s bonus, letting newbies get a Unite license for speedster Zeraora.

The mobile version has apparently garnered five million “preregistrations,” and to mark this figure (because they definitely wouldn’t have done anything had it been 4,999,999) there’s an event unique to the mobile version that will reward 1,000 Aeos tickets, a license for Pikachu, and a Holowear for the yellow monster called Festival Style. And you know what, if they get to 7.5 million, there will be another 1,000 pretend monies! Tell your 2.5 million friends!

Then there’s Unite squads. This is a means for both Switch and mobile players to team up more easily. As developer TiMi explains,

“Trainers can create their own squads or search for already-existing squads to join and connect with other players. By choosing squad tags that others can search for, like-minded Trainers can find each other easily.”

If you’ve been playing on Switch and want to, er, switch to mobile, this can be achieved by linking your Nintendo Account or Pokémon Trainer Club account to both versions. Then you can merrily jump between the two. Oh, and they’re finally adding better language support, with French, German, Italian and Spanish languages added to the game tomorrow too.