DesktopInvasion

Battle, catch & play -- any time, any tab!

Available for free on Windows, Mac & Linux.

DesktopInvasion is a non-commercial fan project.

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Windows

Run DesktopInvasion.exe to start the game. It is best to unzip the folder inside an application folder. To do so, navigate to "C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local" (you can find the hidden folder AppData in your file explorer by enabling "Hidden Items" inside "View"), then make a new folder "DesktopInvasion" and extract the .zip file inside that folder. This desktop pet game is a fan creation without any official release, so you will have to authorize the app upon running it the first time.

Download for Windows (.zip)

MacOS

Because this is an unidentified .dmg file, you will have to give authorization to open the file (this will require clicking through the warnings that pop up, and entering your password). After opening DestopInvasion.dmg, drag the file to your "Applications" folder to install it. This desktop pet game is a fan creation without any official release, so you will have to again authorize the app upon running it the first time.

Download for MacOS (.dmg)

Linux

Run DesktopInvasion.AppImage to start the game. You will probably have to authorize the file by calling `chmod +x DesktopInvasion.AppImage` first. It runs on any distribution that supports AppImage binaries, as long as xcb (X11/XWayland) is accessible. DesktopInvasion has the honor of being the Least Significant Viable Use Case of xx-zones, branding me an enemy of Gnomes worldwide!

Download for Linux (.AppImage)

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Credits

DesktopInvasion is a non-commercial fan project that is intended to be a love letter to Pokémon, and in particular to Heartgold and Soulsilver. These latter games were unique in that they included beautiful overworld sprites, making the sense of companionship and shared adventure with your Pokémon more vivid and charming than in any of the other games. DesktopInvasion is my attempt to breathe new life into these beautiful sprites.

DesktopInvasion is available for free. I have never and will never seek any fees or donations for this game. This game makes extensive use of material that I do not own. It is my sincere belief that I have used this material in a spirit of fair use. Apart from moderate use of LLMs, all source code is written by me, with gameplay based on widely available sources.

Sprites

I would like thank the Graphics Design team at Game Freak, and thanks to whoever else was involved in creating these in-world sprites. While I could list names of the people who I guess would have been involved in creating these sprite, this credit would be unauthorized and potentially incorrect.

Therefore I wish to broadly thank whoever were the ones that poured hundreds of hours of love into each pixel and each frame, to bring about one of the most charming and wonderful collection of pixel art ever made. A further thank you goes out to those that worked on the PC box sprites, as well as the trainer sprites, as both of these are used inside DesktopInvasion as well.

Gameplay

I would like to thank all those at Game Freak that over the first decade of its existence, for generations 1 through 4, created the Pokémon gameplay through creative iteration and hard work. While replicating a stub version of that gameplay for DesktopInvasion, I gained new appreciation of the elegance and tight design of Pokémon gameplay.

I would also like to thank the Emerald Kaizo community. Out of all Pokémon communities, they are one of the most dedicated and inspired --- and that is saying a lot. I made extensive use of their documentation on how the Pokémon Emerald battle AI works to make my own stub version, and without them I would have spent much more time to make something lesser.

Asset ripping

Asset ripping is an art. I must therefore thank those people that took the time to make these beautiful sprites easily available. These are:

Dragoon for TSR — Gen 1, 2 & 4 overworld & trainer sprites
redblueyellow — Gen 3 overworld sprites
Ploaj — PC icon sprites
Sunday-Domeko — Pokéball sprites
Dazz — Ethan and Lyra sprites

Other

I would like to thank Cody "CodeMan38" Boisclair for creating the Press Start 2P font, and Fontworks Inc. for creating the DotGothic16 font. There would have been no suitable replacement for either one of these fonts for DesktopInvasion.

Finally I would like to thank Sofiia for playtesting, helping come up with Pet Mode, and consistently supporting the development of DesktopInvasion.