Last updated on November 20th, 2025 at 10:55 am
Pokémon Friends – Puzzle Game Review
Pokémon Friends is a Puzzle/Family game from The Pokemon Company, first launched in 22nd July 2025.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 527+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Pokémon Friends Stand Out
Pokémon Friends is a plush-filled puzzle game packed with charming challenges!
■ Packed with Puzzles
Pokémon Friends has over 1,200 puzzles, ranging from quick brainteasers to genuine head-scratchers.
■ Knit New Friends
Solve puzzles to get yarn that you can use to make a plethora of plush Pokémon pals!
■ Trouble in Think Town
Think Town’s plush-loving populace needs your help! Can your savvy puzzle-solving skills weave wonder back into their lives?
■ Play Every Day
Stamp your calendar to commemorate the day’s puzzles, then hop into your catalog to admire your Pokémon friends!
■ Personalize Your Perfect Plush Room
Decorate your very own plush rooms with fun furniture, cute wallpaper, and plush galore! Mix and match delightful decorations to create the perfect vibe for your one-of-a-kind space.
■ Fun for the Whole Family
Up to five save files means everyone can have a turn!
■ Additional Content (DLC)
DLC is available for purchase in the in-game Shop.
DLC will be permanently available to play upon purchase.
Some features only available with the paid DLC.
Please read our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy before playing.
This game requires an Internet connection. Data charges may apply.
Free to start; optional in-game purchases available. Persistent internet and compatible smart device required. Data charges may apply for mobile version.
Message to minors: Please get the permission of your parent or guardian before purchasing paid items.
Dramatization. Pokémon Friends does not include AR functionality.
Plush shown are in-game items only. Not real products.
Compatible Devices
Memory: At least 3GB of RAM is recommended.
Note: Players may be unable to play certain modes easily when using a device with insufficient memory.
This Puzzle game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Pokémon Friends is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 16th October 2025
Recent improvements include:
Certain bugs have been fixed.
The daily untangling limit for players who have not purchased the Basic Pack has been increased from one time to three times.
You can now select from three difficulty levels when untangling for the first time after the tutorial ends.
To make it easier for players to tackle puzzles better suited to their abilities, the conditions for puzzles leveling up or down have been adjusted.
You can now get one yarn each day when you beat your record.
You can now get yarn when you reach level 6 of a puzzle for the first time.
Download & Availability
Pokémon Friends is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Pokémon Friends on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
You just need a few more medium sized characters.
We do like it, we wish there was more to it though.
Probably more fun if you Buy DLC, but as a free game it gets boring veeeery quickly.
Been playing everyday since it launched. The puzzles are fun but it starts to get old. There arent many plushies so it doesnt feel rewarding. This game needs some events or new types of puzzles to bring some life into it. We still look forward to playing it everyday like wordle but its meh.
Most of the mini games are shallow and uninspired. Many of them have absolutely nothing to do with Pokemon beyond a sprite or a doodle of a mon. At the higher difficulty levels some of the puzzles become straightforwardly impossible due to the unreasonable timer. The decoration aspect, while the strongest portion of the game, is very unintuitive with terrible controls. It makes the best part of the game frustrating and annoying.
The puzzles are fun but only 3 per day is criminal. The game is free to play but might as well cost money to download.
This game if you put no money into it gets very old very quickly. Youre on a major time limit, can only untangle once a day essentially. The games are repetitive and takes forever to to level up for the community challenges. We gave it 50 days, now ready to give it up.
We love the concept of this game, but the fact you need to pay to play more than 3 puzzles, which are extremely limited in variety, every single day is more than enough to keep players away. Additionally, we did end up paying and we still dont think its that fun. You cant choose the type of yarn youre aiming for the plush you need for a quest or even just a shot at a random type. Being able to do that or pick the puzzles youre playing would change the game immensely. Instead, you pay $35 to sit and play for hours just to get every yarn you DONT need and have no control over it.
This game is so cute and it's fun to play, but the time limit on the game play is so short!! This is supposed to be marketed to children right? We're far from that, and we are regularly running out of time while we're trying to figure out these puzzles. As it progresses in difficulty it becomes impossible to solve a minimum of 3 puzzles in under a minute. Please address this!! If possible, judge based on how long we took to complete, don't limit our time.
We really want to like this game, we even bought the full DLC. We enjoyed it so much at the start, but the way the game progresses punishes you for getting better. The challenges get much harder as you level up, but the time to complete each puzzle remains the same. If the time for each puzzle scaled with difficultly, this would be a delightful game. Its just disappointing to level up the puzzles and be met with less rewards and less fun.
That Way, we Could Do A Set At The Start Of The Day And A Set Of Yarn Before Bed.
Hi! So we want to start this off by saying we love this game. The puzzles are unique and fun. The plushies are super adorable. The side missions are hilarious (still love the detective dude who wanted a Mimikyu plush so he could study what was underneath the disguise lol). But theres one thing thats been becoming more and more restrictive the longer Ive been playing and its the 1 minute time limit you have to solve a group of puzzles. We understand why the time limit is there. It increases the difficulty. However, as you get higher in the challenge levels for some of those puzzles (looking at you – Stamp Box & Squirtle Garden & Release the Pokemon from the Box), the time limit begins to feel unreasonable. Its becoming increasingly frustrating that we will be able to successfully solve these puzzles at these higher difficulties but because it took us 20 seconds to find that solution we dont have time for the other rounds. Especially for the ones that require you to solve 5-6 rounds. Could we have an option in settings to disable this time limit? We think itll be conducive to promoting a longevity if players dont feel like theyre being forced to choose between speed and actually learning how to solve the puzzle. We would prefer a life system where you can only make a certain amount of mistakes per puzzle before you fail and receive the same penalty that already exists for failing to complete in the time limit.
After about a week of this quick-hit daily game, you realize how barebones it is. You do three puzzles out of a library that wont last long unless you shell out a minimum of $10. Then you get to make a single plush (the designs are cute, at least) out of a shockingly small sample of Pokemon. Then you give those to random townspeople who pass off your work as their own generosity, getting next to nothing in return. And then you repeat. All the while, its a game with Friends in the name with zero friend functionality. Would be embarrassing if we didnt already know they were raking in money from it.
If you want a free puzzle a day type app that happens to be Pokmon themed, thats what you can get. The furniture collecting and room decorating portion is nearly impossible to enjoy if you dont buy the dlc.
We have been stuck on the same task for nearly a month now. They want 3 large sized plushies, where the issue is the only large sized plushie is Charizard. Now, its random enough to earn the Fiery yarn from your daily puzzles. Now, tie that in with actually making the Charizard. They either need to have a request swap, or simply add more large sized plushies.
We started out with just playing for free for a few weeks, and we think that was the right way to go. The puzzles get harder as you go, and they end up quite challenging, even for an adult, by the highest level since the time limit is so strict! We ended up buying the Basic Pack and am happy with the additional puzzles and plushies. With the Basic Pack, you can choose how much you want to play, either unlimited or set the number of plays per day. It set it to 3. The minigames have a solid art style and offer a variety of brain teasers. Some of them are the exact types of puzzles seen in older main-series Pokemon games, such as the Pikachu game using the same rules/skills as Wallaces/Juans gym puzzle in Hoenn. The plush are cute and what we tried the game for, but Id say its the weaker part of the game. Its fun to see which plush you get, but the actual room customization is bare-bones and difficult to control. Some of the quests ask for very specific plush, too, and with how luck-based plush-making is, its difficult to fulfill their requests.
Love this game. We recently got to a part of the game where a little spider was in our room. Now we have this thing where we click all the interactables before using our yarn. And now the spider hasnt come back. Ahhhh Whhhy? Hahaha.
This Game is really fun but theres not much else to do mabey for a update allow us to practice on the mini games that would be fun.
First dont worry about the easiness early on. The puzzles get more complicated as you level each one up. Also, if you buy the basic upgrade, you can solve unlimited puzzles in one day and buying more will give you more access to a variety of puzzles. Dont limit your enjoyment because you are unsure of the quality, because they are worth it.
Hi this is a really nice and cool game.
We always get on here and we untangle like 2 strands of yarn and it says we can't untangle any more until like 13 hours later. And then we have to leave the game so if you could just give us a like limit of 6 hours of untangling time then we would play it more. But it's not like we don't like the game cause we do but we don't really have anything to do on it. So please give us more time to untangle the string.
Ive been playing the free version for about three weeks now. We play this game kinda like people play Wordle. Theres three levels you may complete daily. Youll always acquire one yarn from playing, meaning you can make one plush a day. Occasionally we decorate, usually after getting new decorations or plushies. We within the last week we have failed at least one level each day. Therefore, the difficulty does spike after playing long enough (or we are very slow.) Play consistently each day and the game will become harder. We see no need for the upgraded version because then Id play the game too long each day and burn out of it wasting 10 dollar. One criticism is that we wish there were more friends to gift to, but maybe Im impatient right now because we dont have the right sized plushie to give away and thats the only mission availablemaybe we really wish there were more missions available that dont conflict with one another so we could feel like Im making progress? And we wish there were different wall papers, floorings, and things to hang on the side wall in the decoration room. Oh! A little thing we love is all of the stuff that you click on in the main room the window, the spider who sometimes shows, the hanging bird, etc. We cant help but wonder if there are more am we unlocking them via levels or are yall adding stuff? Either way, great.
The puzzles are good, the fact we can only do three a day isnt a major problem for us, but the quests have become a problem. We have one quest available to us, and have been locked behind one quest for weeks because the person is requesting two large plushes. The issue is that if you dont buy the expansions, the ONLY large plush is Psyduck. In order to make specific plushes you need two of the yarn, and we have gotten a single water yarn in three weeks. We need four total in order to make it past this one and only quest we are allowed to do. There is no good reason that this oversight of only one large plush being in the free version has occurred, and has made progression impossible because of this hyper specific quest that recurs with each of the sizes.
We got the game for little puzzles and we havent been upset about it at all really, its a free game, but we checked to see all the plushies we could make and there like 14-15 different plushies in total. Which made us wonder why would anyone play this other than for the puzzles but to play the puzzles freely you have to pay $9.99 (and it gives new plushies) but Im not spending $10 on a puzzle game that has really no content. We want to like it more but unless you drop your card digits the game is nothing but repetition that isnt even interesting.
This is a nice, laid-back game thats simple and fun. Its everything it needs to be. The only problem is that the majority of the plushes are locked behind in-game purchases. You only get 16 different plushes and 5 types of yarn without paying. Its kinda ridiculous. We hope Pokmon shows some love to this game and updates it frequently with things you can get without paying.
There is only one rare plush in the whole game and you can only do 3 puzzles per day.
We really enjoy this game, but why is everything behind a paywall??? The concept is fun, we enjoy the games, we just cant get behind parts of it. We would appreciate: More time for higher level games MORE ROOMS!!!!! Better rates of getting the grass yarn (seriously we never get grass yarn) 1 other medium sized plush The ability to see your past calendar months without being able to play them Game is very fun though.
The games are super fun but as you keep doing them, they get harder and harder. You do not get better rewards for attempting the difficult puzzles and have no option to do lower difficulty ones once the puzzles have leveled up. A newcomer doing puzzles for the first time and clearing all of them gets a better reward than someone attempting the more difficult ones and narrowly failing only one. The game now feels frustrating to play. There should either be more time given as the games get harder or better rewards.
Gives you 3 fun puzzle games per day. Once you complete them, there is nothing else to the game. Collecting very limited amount of dolls and the tasks is the same. You either collect dolls and hold them or give them away in the tasks, not really both. Played this for a month and was not very pleased with this. There is about 5/6 different puzzles that do get challenging the more you play. There is a pay to play aspect but just playing the free version feels like we're not getting our money's worth. Ended up deleting this.
The puzzles are fun but we really wish you could turn off the time limit. Once you get to like level 9 the puzzles are too hard to complete in one minute. Also wish the dlc wasnt priced so high.
We have played the game for a month now. Finished everything we can. Unfortunately, it takes too long to get stuffed animals. You literally get one, cant even complete challenges for more. You also cant get the stuffs you need for the friendship quests. Its just so boring now. We get on, play the 3 games to get our one pull, then we get off. We love the concept but its needs more flavor.
Game starts out so easy, but by level 8-9 its ridiculously hard and the games arent really all that fun-especially the ones that use the tilt controls. Those games are absolutely horrible.
When the timer runs out youre not allowed to finish the puzzle. So, its a puzzle game that doesnt let you play the puzzles. Please change this. Im fine with not getting the nicer yarn if we dont complete it in the time limit but cutting us off from the game we came to play makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Worse than pay to win the free version is basically useless the difficulty spike for doing well is insane with no better rewards and the number one puzzle mechanic that they force you to use from time to time is gyroscopic controls you should be able to opt out some those features.
We genuinely have fun playing this every morning and love watching our plushie collection grow! However The minigames are becoming monotonous because we rarely see some while only ever seemingly getting the others. The yarn you get from your daily games is also confusing? Because we could have 3 separate days with all different minigames but Ill still get something like sparky yarn. We have only ever gotten 1 normal yarn and 3 or so grassy yarn. For context: we have been playing since release. Plus theres a quest that asks for 2 medium sized plushies which is alright, Im okay with taking time to collect and get to that point! The only problem is the only medium plushies we have available in base game are in the normal yarn category which, as stated above, we have only recieved 1 of. We hope to see more minigames, plushies, and yarn types added soon because with the way it is now the challenge isnt fun. Its monotonous and frustrating. The difficulty of the minigames themself is already especially as we are an adult but with getting the same yarn and the same plushies over and over.
This is not a very good game. Playing the free version (as we dont want to give this money) feels so unrewarding, especially since theres next to nothing to unlock. Youll go weeks without making even the slightest bit of progress. The reason we think it deserves two stars is because the art is really cute and theres a lot of love put into some of the little details. We dont think anyone wouldve batted an eye if you could buy it for 3 dollars but corporate greed wins out in the end, we suppose. Just dont play this game. You can get a Professor Layton game or two for what it would cost to buy this, so if youre really hankering for a puzzle game experience, just play that. Its far more rewarding and interesting than this will ever be.
The game is cute and we enjoy doing the little puzzles, enough so we got the $10 pack. A price way too high for whats here though. You play 3 minigames/puzzles to get 1 yarn. If you complete all 3 within the time limit you get a pretty nice yarn that has a chance of making 2 plushies instead of one. The big problem we have is that as you do well in the games they get harder, and they honestly get pretty hard to complete within the time limit. Making it way harder to get the pretty nice yarn. So Im getting less plushies from the harder puzzles. We were expecting that the harder they got the more yarn we would get for each set we do, especially with how random the yarn is. Its really discouraging to keep playing the same puzzles for the same (or even less since its harder to get the pretty nice yarn) reward Id get for playing them at easy levels. Aside from that we wish the rooms were full rooms and not just one wall for you to decorate. Overall theres just not a lot here and it only gets worse as you progress. Definitely not worth $10 let alone the $33 they want for the combo pack.
This game is SUPER fun and we love it sooo much but 2 things one it doesnt work with our Apple Pencil and 2 as a suggestion: what if you ad a daily streak reward thingy? Any ways Love this game and its really fun the play in ur free time.
Like its a really really good game but why cant you just get more puzzles a day when you play it like why did you only add 3 puzzles a day and we got pikachu and scorbunny and quakly and a pyduck and then when we came back and we saw pyduck sleeping and we wanted to untangle more yarn but pyduck was sleeping and we got upset so please add an update to this game so it will have more than 3 puzzles so pyduck wont be sleeping please do it.
Ngl, its an amazing game! Its super easy to start off, so you can get a feel of it. Later on, it gets SO hard, we cant hardly complete one! Tho its still an amazing game, we think it should add some updates, like more plushies, puzzles, and maybe some gamemodes! Such as endless, [you would stop whenever you fail a puzzle] race mode, [race against 1-7 other players to see who completes the puzzles first, in 3 rounds!] and battle mode! [going through many puzzles, getting points based on placement, against 1-7 other players!] anyways, really good game.
We enjoyed everything about this game, from the puzzles to the plushies we deducted one star though, because the puzzle limit can be too restricting without the Basic Pass, which we bought as soon as we downloaded it. We do hope they include new features in future updates, like online multiplayer where people can compete for the high score; another online function where people can check out other's rooms for inspiration; a whole rating and categorization system for puzzles like with Big Brain Academy; and finally, please include the Substitute doll!! Pokmon Friends holds a lot of potential.
It is a fun concept, but the display room is frustrating. Way too tiny, and the controls to place the plush are beyond wonky. We spend more time trying get the controls to work properly to organize the plushes in the display room than we do playing the mini games.
So- we love Pokemon. We have great memories with a lot of the games. We loved Pokemon quest, we liked Pokemon cafe, we really enjoy Pokemon TCG pocket, and Pokemon Go is pretty good. We also play the mainline games. So of course we were excited when we heard about this on the Pokemon direct! We mean, come on! The concept is adorable! Making Pokemon plushies with string from puzzles? Heck yeah! However, sadly you have to pay 10$ to get unlimited access to mini games. If not, you get about 3 (we think?) and the cooldown is 3 hours. You have to pay 33$ for everything in the game. Thats outrageous.. Over half the price of a mainline game, lol! We think the 10$ is worth it (though we havent bought it yet, just got the game recently) if you enjoy these puzzles a lot. However for some people, they might just like a wordle scenario. Depends. Cute game, but we need the prices to go lol stars.
We downloaded it yesterday we liked the puzzles so much and how there was quest to keep busy, but we dont want to pay money to play the game we downloaded, we thought Pokemon would be more aware of this. In short this game is pretty fun, only thing is, we dont want to pay money to play the actual game we downloaded.
We have to wait so long just to play only three games and we cant even go to the past day and play those games its not as great as it is on switch. The games are fun and all but it gets boring after playing the same puzzles the whole time. Its not the greatest but its ok.
We're a huge pokemon fan who also loves puzzles!! We bought the basic pack and truly love the game, but as you get further along, the puzzles get trickier and we're constantly running out of time to solve them. If more time could be added to more challenging puzzles OR allow us to gain time from completing a puzzle (because 10 seconds off from making an error is a LOT!!!) would be awesome. We also maxed out our friendship level, but completing the rest of the quests feels impossible with how random obtaining each yarn is. We'd love to be able to unwravel certain plushes we have to gain back the yarn bc we have soooo many extras that we have no use for.
It started off really good. Missions were fun and easy. Something to look forward to daily. But at some point its pretty much gonna force you to pay for the expansions. Without the expansions theres only one M size plush and the odds of obtaining it are really low. So youre hard stuck until who knows when. Literally pay to play. We want to like it. But we cant. Ill uninstall for a while. Maybe itll be a more complete game one day.
Why do you have to purchase real money to play more!? Thats ridiculous! We would love to explore all the mini games but WHY do you need to purchase them?! Everything should be free! Not paid for! We wish this game was free to play and not having to pay money to play this! Developers! Please Put this game on Apple Arcade! It would definitely let people play it whenever they want and about the plushies cute and all but Im a collector not a giver sooo get rid of the give feature and replace it with something else! Other than that, not good.
Im a big fan of puzzle games, but playing the free version of this of this very boring. There is only about 3-5 minutes of play you can do per day, you cant repeat puzzles more than once, and the progression is painfully slow. Ive never seen a more blatant punishment for not buying the DLC. Also, the name of this game is baffling. No way to connect with other people (actual friends) and show or trade plushies, and the NPCs ask for more plushies than you can create in one day. You end up having none of your own to decorate with because youre trying to somehow progress. Very disappointing and not worth a download.
The puzzles are fun but you can only play them once a day. Its very disappointing.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.0.5
- Size: 519.44 MB
- iOS: 16.0 or later
- Languages: EN, JA
- Content Advisory: Loot Boxes
- Developer: The Pokemon Company
Last updated: 16th October 2025 | Genre: Puzzle, Family | Developer: The Pokemon Company