Welcome to the world of Freaklandia, where people everywhere hunt the planet's wildlife and have them fight each other for sport!

And for some reason, nobody thinks anything's wrong with that!

Short guide:

Use arrow keys to move, I to open the inventory, and K to talk to NPCs

To win, you have to get your Candleman to a certain level and have all four of the available Pocket Freaks in your inventory.

If your Candleman is killed and you don't have the money to revive him, you'll have effectively lost, so don't do that.

Like the RPGs this game is based on, you should be able to learn everything you need to know by exploring the area, but here's a longer guide in case you get stuck:

Full guide

In Pocket Freaks, you control James as he tries to collect more wildlife and level up his own Pocket Freak, Candleman. In the outside area, there are four groups of bushes. If you walk around in one of these groups, you will likely encounter a Pocket Freak, and you’ll have the option to do one of three things during an encounter:

FIGHT the Pocket Freak (your Candleman must have more than 0 HP to be able to do this)
TRAP the Pocket Freak (must have a Freak Cube in your inventory to be able to do this)
RUN from the Pocket Freak

Your Candleman starts with just 5 HP, and will lose health quickly during battles. You must regularly visit the campfire at the top of the outside area to increase his health. If he falls below 0 HP during battle, the only way to continue fighting with him will be to go to Shelia’s shop and buy a revival.

You’ll start with one Freak Cube, which you can use to trap a Pocket Freak after weakening him with your Candleman. Any additional Freak Cubes will have to be bought at the shop. You need at least of one of every species in your inventory in addition to getting Candleman to level 10 in order to win the game, but if you do trap extra members of a species, you can sell them to Sheila in her store.

Once you’ve reached the win conditions, return to Professor Pine’s lab. He’ll let you know if you’re, but make sure that you’re always checking the inventory to save yourself a bit of work. If you have any questions about the game that I haven’t touched on here, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll try my best to answer them.

This game took a long time to make, but I have the people below to thank for it happening in the first place, especially in the four days I was given for this jam:

Credits

Player sprites and most inside art from Modern interiors - RPG Tileset [16X16] by LimeZu (itch.io)

James and Pine are modified versions of two of the sprites from LimeZu's sheets

All outside art (outside of the word "sign") from Serene Village - revamped - RPG Tileset [16x16] by LimeZu (itch.io)

"[LPC] Alchemy" by bluecarrot16, Lanea Zimmerman (Sharm), PriorBlue, Jerom, and Wolthera van Hövell tot Westerflier (TheraHedwig).
https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-alchemy

"LPC Wooden Furniture" by bluecarrot16, Baŝto, Lanea Zimmerman (Sharm), William Thompson, Tuomo Untinen (Reemax), Janna/Lilius/Jannax.
https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-wooden-furniture

Goblin sprite from Stephen "Redshrike" Challener with William.Thompsonj as contributor
https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-goblin

Other enemy sprites also from Redshrike
10 basic rpg enemies | OpenGameArt.org

The player heads in the dialogue boxes were generated by Bing AI

The Candleman and Freak Cube sprites were by me

"Bleeping Demo" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Blippy Trance" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To The Death (battle music) by Ketyri from Pixabay

Emart (store music) by BLACKBOX from Pixabay

Cash register sound effect by MAXOU-YT from Pixabay

Fire sound effect by Gregor Quendel from Pixabay

Swoosh sound effect from Pixabay

More information