Fontemon is a Pokémon game squeezed into a fountain

Fontemon is technically a font, but also, somewhat miraculously, a playable miniature Pokémon parody, detected by the software engineer Daniel Feldman. The game, made by Michael Mulet, expands my understanding of what a source is It is, but it sure is amazing. In addition, it is full of references to Minnesota.

The experience is not as “smooth” as a modern one Pokémon game or even the original Game Boy entries, but it’s kind of reminiscent of typing on a typewriter, with user interface elements and half-font / half-monsters falling on the screen as if they’ve been hit by a bar. types. Minnesota elements may seem out of place, but they are very funny overall. You will fight your way through Ottowa, Lakeville and a pair of “twin cities” and will be treated to examples of nice and warm Minnesota.

Image by Michael Mulet

Playing Fontemon is as simple as typing – either on the game page or in your own word processor or image editor with a downloadable version of the font. The easiest way to progress in history is not to try to type coherently. The game will continue with normal Pokémon milestones to receive an initial monster and go out for your first battles in the gym with a series of absurd characters. Just make sure to type the correct letters when you’re in a battle. Of course, if you make a mistake or lose, you can also simply press the Backspace key to undo the error.

Now, I admit that I get lost in the specific technical details of how it all works, but Mulet provided a full explanation of how it all happened on GitHub. As I understand it, Fontemon is built on OpenType, a flexible font format created by Microsoft that can be used and modified for several different digital configurations. Mulet used a method similar to how PDFs produce text and images to create the visuals in Fontemon, and attributed the game’s logic and character sprites to ligatures (combined font characters that are “printed” as unique glyphs such as “æ”) to build the game and its 43 different options.

It is a wild creation and a fun diversion for anyone who wants to get an extra dose of pocket monsters. You can try Fontemon on Mulet’s website, Code Relay.