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Howdy, people of FTH. Unlike most topics in this section, this post is not about a roleplay. It is, in fact, about a Pokemon fangame.

A Pokemon fangame is a, well, game made by fans, using RPG Maker and a special package for it, called Pokemon Essentials: if you are familiar with such games, you probably know Pokemon Reborn, a long-running project which has reached its 15th release, with a 16th being in the works. Reborn is famous around the web for having a very loyal fanbase, with a forum bustling with activity and initiatives of all sorts...

And well, lately one initiative that has had a lot of success in Reborn's community is this: the Fangame Exposé. Basically, it is a section of the forum, in which the developers of Reborn help people start new fangame projects of their own, giving tips and advice: another rather succesful fangame, Pokemon Rejuvenation, saw the light thanks to this very initiative.

But there is another project that saw the light recently, in the very same section, a project so ambitious, so daring, and yet at the same time so straightforward, that it soon gathered a loyal following, to the point of being voted fangame project of the year 2015. The name of this project is Pokemon Se7en, and I pride myself in being its leader (my name on that forum is Catherine Cook, which would be a character of our game).
What sets Se7en apart from most Pokemon games? Simple: the fact that it is about the Pokemon. It might seem a silly thing to say, but think about it: because of websites like Bulbapedia, Smogon, Serebii and the likes, people nowadays know everything about canon Pokemon. There is no challenge in facing an enemy Pokemon, because the moment you see it, you immediately know what type it is, what competitive archetype it belongs to (bulky attacker, fragile speedster etc), and what moves are most effective against it. Therefore, planning your team in advance to overcome every challenge becomes very easy. To try and counter this tendence, many Pokemon games nowadays (not just fangames, also canon games made by Game Freak, ORAS being the most glaring example) have focused on introducing new elements, that can give a different twist to battles: mega evolutions, new mechanics for moves and, in the case of Reborn and Rejuvenation, field effects.

Not Se7en. We, the staffers of Se7en, are all hardcore fans who played the Gen 1 games. And we still remember the thrill those games gave us: the emotion on not knowing anything about the Pokemon you faced, the excitement when a Pokemon of yours evolved (you didn't know HOW your Pokemon evolved, or into what, so when they did, you were so excited to see how it would turn out).
We therefore tried to recreate the same thrill. How? Easy: by having a full Pokedex of nearly 160 original species, as in, species we created. Artworks, sprites, stats, evolutionary methods, movepools, everything about these Pokemon was made by us. Which means that you, the player, don't know anything about them when you start your game, which means that, much like in Gen 1, your adventure is a constant discovery.

Because discovery is the true essence of Pokemon. Or at least, we believe so.

The only canon Pokemon that will appear in our game are Ditto (for breeding purposes) and Eevee, and the latter will get 3 new evolutions created by us, on top of its canon ones. All other Pokemon in our Pokedex are 100% original.

Our main topic is found here. We are proceeding on an announcement policy, meaning that, to preserve the discovery effect I detailed, we are not revealing ALL of our new species in advance: only a few of them are announced from time to time, in order to check the people's reactions, get their feedback and yes, keep the hype train going (hype is important too).
The topic has been going for quite a while now, and it consists of 110 pages full of all kinds of posts, by staffers and fans alike. Of course, tracking down all of our announcements in such a mess would be very difficult, which is why I created another topic: it is basically a list of all things that have been revealed so far, found here: if you want to see the Pokemon revealed so far, or to check out our original characters, or to listen to some tracks of our OST, this is the topic you want to check out.

Much like Reborn and Rejuvenation, we are proceeding in an episodic format: this means that the game is divided into a number of episodes, and we release one at a time. Because of various technical difficulties we have faced, and because of the sheer amount of work required to create, sprite and code 160 new Pokemon, the work is proceeding at a rather slow pace, so only one episode has been released so far. If you want to try it out, you can find the download link here. If you have problems with it, feel free to post in this last topic I linked: it also acts as our troubleshooting topic.

Well, this is all. I hope this post persuaded you to join the #FOLD movement today.