Reviewing Fanmade Pokemon: Quarantine Crystal, Part 3

Part three of my review of the Pokedex of the fan-made Pokemon game Quarantine Crystal! Not much to say that I haven't said in the previous parts of this. It's a fan-made game that replaces the 251 Pokemon in Pokemon Crystal with wonderful new fan-made Pokemon! I comment on how much I like them, and kind of try to speculate on the typings and inspiration of these creatures! 

As always, thanks to Heckbot, who provided all the screenshots of all the Pokedex entries for this game! Additional thanks to MrKyurem, one of the actual creators of the fan-game, who provided some extra updated artwork and dex entries!

A relatively simple design, but a pretty cool one! Sandolph is a sand-dwelling dolphin! I love the idea of them 'talking by blowing sand'. It's got such an old-school-Pokemon kind of detail to have. Granted, real dolphins don't actually communicate by the water they blow out of their blowholes, but real dolphins also aren't brown and swim in the sand. I love that there's a Digimon-esque bit of 'monsterification' with the little nub-fingers on Sandolph's fins. 

It's a bit of a repetitive trope throughout various different video game bestiaries of creatures that normally don't live in the sand, but 'swim' through them in the way that aquatic monsters swim through the ocean. But god damn if it isn't a fun idea! Hell, Nintendo has even done this a couple of times before, with Pokemon's own Hippowdon and Breath of the Wild's Molduga. 

Pure Ground-type, presumably? 

I'm not entirely sure if Dunefin here is based on a real-life cetacean of some sort. it's got two blowholes; two giant orc-like tusks; a Chinese-dragon-esque furry tail; and it's got four legs, each tipped with claws. It's still a pretty cool-looking monster design, though. It's the sort of thing that I can believe that a dolphin-like creature would evolve into in a fantasy setting. I love the Dune-esque idea of this thing just coiling through the sand, opening its mouth and just vacuuming up everything in its way. Is it meant to be a nod to how whales do the same thing to consume krill? Not my favourite design in the Pokedex, admittedly, but not a bad one!

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn! Anyway, it's an Elder-god being that I think is based on the Cthulhu mythos? I can't see 'elder' and 'aeons' in the same sentence without immediately thinking it's a reference to ol' squid-face. I don't think it's a reference to any particular story, though, and instead of just making 'Pokemon Cthulhu' or 'Pokemon Shoggoth', I like that Wellwitch isn't just an elder god full stop. From the description, Wellwitch seems to be some sort of giant sea-plant monster, with the descriptions of how its leaves and bark has been dried out by the sea. That's a pretty cool way to adapt the 'forged by endless time' aspect of the Elder Gods!

As Heckbot below pointed out, Wellwitch is actually based on a real-life creature, the species of gymnosperm from the Namib Desert called Welwitschia mirabillis, an ancient plant often known as a 'living fossil' (hence the whole 'Elder God' vibe). The plant itself is very long-living, and, bizarrely for a desert plant, has gigantic leaves that would normally be impractical for a plant living in such arid and hot climates. But the Welwitschia plant is able to somehow counteract this by having leaves so large enough that they provide adequate shade and a mini-biome for a bunch of insects and its own flowers to survive under. Considering how unique this plant is, and how it seems to not have changed much in evolution, it's certainly a fascinating species!

Design-wise it doesn't try to go too over-the-top, with a bipedal body that's covered near its end with a mass of seaweed matted onto it. A little eyeball is peeking out of the 'chin'! And, of course, it's got three lamprey-like mouths, one on its 'head' and two on each 'arm'. Pretty cool design overall! 

(Water/Grass? Or maybe there is Dark tossed around to replace one of those types?)

Bowlide is an... interesting one! Didn't I see a minor character like this in Dragon Ball Super? Its name is a delightful combination of 'bowl' and 'bolide', and its concept is basically combining a goldfish bowl with those glass balls witches traditionally use in fiction. Pretty interesting! The fact that this is an 'esper fish' means that there isn't even any sort of logistical questions on how this thing moves around, obviously it uses its psychic powers to move itself, glass bowl and bowl-holder and all. Love the description about how it's basically a hermit in the depths of the ocean. Does this game have Dive areas? Or is it just Whirl Islands? Crystal most certainly doesn't, but a lot of these feel like they belong in a deep-sea area!

I think all of these guys are single-stage ones? Bowlide could potentially evolve into Bermudant below but I think the design team of Quarantine Crystal has been pretty obvious on what evolves into what visually. (Oh, and Water/Psychic, obviously)

Oooh, I love this guy. Bermudant here is the epitome of pollution, and a great use of 'stygian depths'. They just rise out of the deep dark trenches of the ocean to spread disease and wreck ships. It's kind of like Hedorah from Godzilla, except Bermudant here isn't explicitly created out of man-made pollution. Is it just an ancient pollution-monster that just exists in the depths of Quarantine Johto?

I like the design of this thing. It's got the silhouette similar to like an elaborate conch or something, but also simultaneously looking like a plesiosaur or a ship in the way that Mega Lapras did. I like the little cloud of toxic miasma around the main 'horn', and the more I look at this guy, the more I'm not exactly sure whether the snake-like goop head is the real 'head', or if that yawning mass on the bottom left is the real one. Maybe the snake/dinosaur-head just has its 'eyes', while Bermudant uses the bottom one exclusively as a mouth? There's a lot of things going on here. The huge spikes that are evocative of underwater spikes... there's a lot going on here, but I like it. 

Water/Poison, presumably, but I can actually see this guy being part-Dark as well. 

Um, okay? Is this a reference to something? I guess like, puppets in slapstick films or something? The idea, I think, is some performer pretending to be a sheet ghost? A sheet dinosaur? Or maybe it's a dinosaur-like bipedal creature pretending to be a ghost? It's got a tail jutting out of its back, and that head looks like it's intentionally based on a cheap art project or something. I like the description that it tries to entertain but is surprisingly brutal because, well, it's a slapstick creature. 

Not a huge fan of this, but maybe if I get what it is, I'd appreciate it more? Presumably it's either some combination of Normal, Fighting, Ghost and Dark? I genuinely don't know. 

Very Digimon or Tokusatsu-monster-esque. I approve. Crustazer is a lobster or crayfish or some sort, but its giant claws have been transformed into tasers! It's also got a bunch of spikes on its face, and I like that the lobster's antennae has been adapted into wires. Pretty neat-looking creature all around conceptually. It also kinda looks like a Hercules Beetle in some way? Pretty creative idea.

Water/Electric? Or Electric/Steel? I'm not sure.

AAAA WHAT A CUTIE. I love this guy's face! It's a baby elk but it's made up of moss! It's a Swamp Thing and Bambi mixed together! I love its cute face and I love the colours they use for the sprite. It's a little moss baby! Its dex entry is even adorably sad, noting that this is a species of Pokemon that is distrustful of humans because we humans hunt them down for medicine. It's like how we hunt down real-life deer and antelopes and elks to cut down their horns for medicine! It's sad.

A bit less traditionally cute, but still cute! I love how the sprite artist took the shaggy beard-out-of-swamp-gunk Swamp Thing face and still turn it into something adorable. I love that the 'antlers' of the moose is also seemingly made up of fungal growths! It's pretty awesome. It's interesting that the dex entry notes that Mossarre here is 'heralded as an evil spirit', and its moss is used as poison throughout history. Did it grow from a small timid baby moss-elk into a vengeful poison swamp monster of doom? Or is it just what humanity revere Mossarre as because it now actually has the power to spread its poison spores around?

Pretty cool creature all around, and I think the hallmark of a good monster entry is to give a couple of sentences that describe what the creature is all about, but leaves your audience asking for more. I would totally love if there was a side-area that lets us explore if the Mossarre is actually hostile or not, or if it's just humans that use the Mossarre's poison in an evil way? I like that this region has multiple fungal-themed monsters that went in completely different directions. I like it a lot! 

We've got a nuclear waste monster here! It's a topic absolutely something that actual Nintendo will never, ever touch for obvious reasons, but here in fan-made Pokemon land we don't have any such constraints. Elephoot here is presumably named after the real-life mass of radioactive waste called Elephant's Foot in Chernobyl, but it's not actually based that much on elephants. That'd be it's evolution! Elephoot is a pretty simple and cute goop monster, trailing radioactive goo and looking just tired and sad. Very adorable, very much reminds me of some of the better baby Digimon designs.

I don't know what 'Seahem' is, and I presumably will in the course of reading the dex entries, but apparently experimenting with Seahem created these Elephoots! Presumably, pure Poison-type, since unlike Pokemon Uranium there's no real dedicated type to nuclear energy. 

And here we go with Pripyderm! I love the googly-eyes in the mass of the main body, and I love that this thing basically came around because of the pun with 'Elephant's Foot'. There's definitely a vaguely elephant-esque silhouette to the whole thing, although not that explicitly. I do love that the... goopy... nuclear liquid dripping from its mouth does vaguely resemble an elephant's trunk and tusks. But the rest of Pripyderm looks so different! The four legs are like, nuclear reactors that work as pillars, and somehow the smoke that billows up into a huge cloud forms the beast's "body". My imagination is actually having a ball trying to imagine how this thing moves! Presumably it actually moves like a real elephant, so its giant smoke-cloud part is the main 'body', and the pillar legs simultaneously exude more smoke to form the body, whilst also acting as its extensions? 

I also really like its pretty cool flavour text. 'Its life can only end when the energy in its body is completely used up. Pripyderm will outlive us all.' Ominous, while also not really emphasizing that Pripyderm is dangerous or anything. It's like, the version of a cockroach in this bizarre land where sand dolphins and celestial whales are the norm -- this is the sort of thing that will outlive everything else, the elephantine personification of nuclear waste.

A cutie! I'm always a sucker for these sort of Pokemon designs, where it's just a little bulb or a flower with a face. Hoppip, Oddish, Bounsweet, Eldegoss... Sprunny is, from its name and evolutionary line, a spring onion! It's got nub legs and an adorable expression! I also love that despite its cute face, the dex entry talks about how 'in time, they will be fierce and hardy hunters'. 

I'm guessing the line is pure-Grass that evolves into Grass/Fighting? Or Grass/Dark?

I absolutely love the pun between onion and oni, or a Japanese demon-ogre. Onioni becomes a bit more humanoid than Sprunny, actually having a humanoid body, and it kinda-sorta looks like a scarecrow! It apparently bullies other Pokemon with its massive stalk and makes them cry. It's got such a serene expression for something described as 'strong and brutal'! I like that the sprite artist makes the colour gradually change as the onion grows older. 

Yep, we're full-on an oni now! I love that this guy's design seems to stem on the oni and onion pun. I love that so much. The onion forms the head of the oni, and I like that it's still got basically the same sort of (-_-) expression that its pre-evolutions have, only Onionion has sprouted horns and tusks. I like that its samurai armour seems to be made out of layers (like an onion!) and that its horn seems to be meant to be the stubby roots (?) that an actual onion has. It's also holding a huge club!

I like the description that Onionion uses its scene to drive others away from their territory. That's such an appropriate piece of detail for an onion monster, and if we're being honest also feels like a detail that a yokai would have. 

I get it! It's a toadstool mushroom that is also a toad. Frankly, I'm surprised this pun hasn't been used more in fantasy games! I absolutely love the lumpy body that Todescool has, I love the stubby little legs and the absolutely derpy froggy expression, and the Todescool's got those white lumps all over its back that does double duty of being a toad's warts and a toadstool mushroom's... whatever those white freckles are on the red cap! Genius!

I like the little nod at the real-life (false) folk tale that picking up a toad will transfer their warts into your hands... but it's also incorporated in a way into the gimmick that Todescool here is also a 'mimic', i.e. the Voltorb-style Pokemon that masquerades as an item Pokeball! Pokemon has done it before with a red-and-white mushroom with Foongus, but if we're being honest Foongus is so mundane. He's just a mushroom! Todescool here is a mushroom frog! 

Grass/Poison, I guess, since this is a mushroom? Again, I'm guessing a lot of these types, and I think once I actually play through the game I'll go back and put in comments on any that I guessed particularly off the mark. 

Aaaah, it's a cutie! Lamseed is an adorable baby lamb face on the head of a little cotton-plant! It goes in a completely different direction compared to the more fantastical Cottonee/Whimsicott, and I really do like Lamseed as well as an alternative cotton plant Pokemon! Look at how simple it is as just basically a flower stalk with an adorable face. 

But where Cottonee and Whimsicott went from 'cotton plant' to 'cotton fairy', I think the idea here is that the Lamseed line is inspired by the myths of the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, where people used to think that cotton plants would actually grow entire lambs out of the plant. Except, well, this is the world of Pokemon,  so we get Vegetebaa, who actually are sheep made out of cotton balls. 

I like the yellow colour, which is a reference to the cotton plant's unfertilized yellow flowers! (Also, I'm guessing this line is just pure-Grass).

Ah, yes, Wikipedia's picture for 'zoophyte' is indeed the Tartar Lamb. I'm happy to see when some random obscure factoid that I am aware of does turn to be the inspiration! Baafomet is a bit more elaborate than Vegetebaa, and from the dex entries, it seems like this is a branching evolution based on gender? All male Lamseeds become Baafomets, and all females become Vegetebaas? It fits the sheep theme for sure! I love the way those curly horns wrap around the snout of the sheep's head, and I also love that it covers the front of Baafomet's body like a mane. It makes this designs o much cooler than if it was just a basic-looking male sheep! I'm actually not familiar enough with cotton plants to say, but knowing the amount of research the artists for this game does, I'm going to assume those curly things are probably part of a cotton plant's anatomy. 

I'm pretty sure I used the 'Baaphomet'/'Baafomet' pun as a nickname when I let's played Pokemon Uranium on this blog years ago, and I've named at least a Mareep that exact name as well.

I get the pun! It's a mutt made out of bismuth! I've always loved the word 'bismuth'. It just sounds so cool. I spent half an hour distracted and reading about the geometric patterns that actual bismuth ores can form, and they look so god-dang pretty! The design itself is also pretty cool, just a badass-looking crystal doggo. I love that this batch of the Pokedex just has three seemingly unrelated dogs! As a dog person, I approve! I think these guys are single-stage Pokemon that don't evolve, unless if there's a Eevee-style pre-evolution I'm not seeing?

Presumably pure Steel-type. Rock/Steel?

-gasp- who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? Yes you, YES YOU. Look at this adorable little baby dog. Maulzer and Bismutt are good boys, too, but Tido's face! Just look at that giant, happy terrier-snout grin. It's even got a little heart on its body! I liked him before I realized that Tido was a shark dog. It's a combination of two of my favourite animals on the planet! Did you know that the proper term for shark babies are also pups? I'm not sure if that is the pun that they're going for here, but that's your trivia fact for the day. 

Anyway,  this shark-dog pup is adorable. I love the little detail that they are kept as hunting shark-dogs that hunt down rats (Rattata?) on ships. It's a shark pupper! How can you not love him? (Presumably, Water-type?)

And we've got a big, buff bulldog. Also a good boy! Real-life bulldogs are balls of muscle, and I am happy to see that this guy is a literal walking tank. It's more bull than dog at this point, and I like the visual pun that Maulzer here actually has bull horns, which still looks adorable on that sleepy bulldog face. The dex entry is depressingly true for a lot of the dogs like pit bulls and whatnot that have an unfair reputation for being more savage than they actually are. 

Obviously a Fighting-type, isn't it? 

   

It's a baby panda that grabs a little bamboo shoot! Bambaby has such an adorable sprite! It's apparently elusive and hides in forests that are cleared for urban development. Hopefully Bambaby doesn't actually face the same 'habitat is threatened because of urbanization' problems that panda bears have, but judging by its species name, 'forlorn', I have a feeling they are. 

Bamboo flutes are an actual instrument, but if we're being honest, that is definitely not something I would've thought of when designing a panda Pokemon. So kudos for creativity! Sort of like Farfetch'd, Bambaby and Pipenda still holds on to their plant-based accessory, and Pipenda has fashioned the bamboo stalk into a flute. I had thought that the line was just a regular Normal-type panda until I read the dex entry. "Long after it dies." Wait, what? This is a Ghost-type panda? 

I really love the sad look on the panda's face, and I love the idea of a ghost that just plays an instrument sadly, not bothering anyone and just mourning its fate. The implication of the story here is that the species was driven to extinction because of urban development, and that's sad as all heck! 

A baby peacock! Yay! Do we not have a single peacock official Pokemon? Nope. No, we don't. That's surprising, because peacocks are honestly basically Pokemon, aren't they? They're more elaborate than something like a Fearow or a  Pidgeotto already. I love the charming dex entry for Peauty here, who apparently use their hypnotic powers to get park guests to give them snacks. Real-life baby peafowls actually look like nondescript chickens, but this is the world of Pokemon and I like that Peauty already has the distinctive head-crests and the beginnings of a tail that it's going to spread. 

Psychic/Flying, presumably, which is pretty natural for a peacock Pokemon to be. 

An interesting way to do a peacock Pokemon! Peekeye's huge peacock tail has seemingly became a dress of sorts -- you can still see the bird legs jutting out of it, but the pose does make Peekeye look like someone in a dress. A pretty neat-looking peacock, and at this point in its evolutionary line it's a bit more obvious that they have stronger Psychic powers. 

Peacolder is definitely my favourite part of the evolutionary line, though. And not just because it's got such a great purple colour palette, too, but also because it is unmistakably a peacock but also manages to look so... alien? Ornate? Real-life peacocks have a lot of eye-like feather markings on their tail, but on Peacolder it's got actual eyeballs, it seems! I also like that its head seems to have transformed to have an additional eyeball on the center of its head. 

The most charming part, though, is the dex entry! Apparently male and female Peacolders have massive psychic-eyeball peacock tails, but males use them offensively as hypnotic eyeballs, but females use the many eyes to check on their young. I love this detail so much! 

Okay, this one didn't actually seem that much of an abomination at first, but Messmash is meant to be a Frankentsein's monster! It's a bunch of different body parts stitched together, but for the moment it just looks like a crocodile (Totodile?) with slightly longer arms. From a monkey? Or, well, a Mankey? But the more I look at the sprite, the more I like it. The stitches, the X pupils on the crocodile head, the name Messmash, the absolutely awesome-sounding dex entry?

Perhaps a bit too morbid for an official game, but pretty cool here! And, let's not forget:

Oh yeah. This is more like is as a chimeric, Frankensteined monster! A giant gorilla body, with little stubby crocodile legs? And two entire crocodiles for arms? I like that the crocodile heads still has the X-pupils, and I like that the gorilla head has a Donkey Kong crown and Frankenstein's Monster screw accessories access. Its name is even badass, Blasphermy!

Apparently it reigns over the Messmash like a mad king and kidnaps humans for experiments! It's a straight-up B-movie monster, and I absolutely approve. It's already on its way to being a supervillain! I like the flavour for this one a lot.

Type-wise, I was going to say 'Ghost' for Messmash because it reminded me of Banette. But reading Blasphermy's flavour text? Probably Dark-type, yeah? 

Ooooh, a caddisfly larva! I love these things! Caddisfly larvae are truly cool creatures who live underwater and create a shell around their abdomen out of whatever debris they can gather from the bottom of the pool they live in. They're not lazy bums like those hermit crabs that just scavenge a single shell, caddisfly larvae will actually construct a whole home! It's sort of like an underwater bagworm, only the shells made by caddisfly larvae can vary very differently depending on the debris available!

Caddisicle seems to be a (presumably) Bug/Ice version of the real-life organism, creating its abdomen-shell-nest out of ice crystals. A pretty cool adaptation of the real-life insect, and I love the cartoony mouthless face that Caddisicle has. Very charming!

Okay, this one doesn't look too much like a real Caddisfly, but that's okay, because real-life caddisflies aren't anywhere as interesting as their larvae. Jaddice here is pretty interesting, though, apparently 'experts at manipulation' that spread frost. I can see the abdomen and the wings curled up into looking like part of a dress. I'm not entirely sure if that's a pair of particularly large mandibles or stubby bug legs. I like the idea here, it's an insect who visually resembles a snow queen of sorts. 

So presumably all of these are found in Quarantine Crystal's version of the Ice Path! I don't think 'red snow' is a real thing, unlike yellow snow... unless if blood spills on snow, anyway. Snosebleed here is a pile of snow with stubby legs, and I absolutely love the eyes here! Apparently it's got a nosebleed, aw, poor thing! It's interesting that the description talks about how Snosebleeds have all been quarantined to a single glacier by scientists. Why? Are they that destructive? The description for Snosebleed and its evolutions tell us that the 'red snow' is less blood (although the 'nosebleed' part is definitely based on it) and more lava. It's an ice mountain that bleeds lava! And it's got a fever, which sometimes leads to nosebleeds! Poor baby!

Ice/Fire, then, if it's meant to be volcanic?

Snowup is a bit more humanoid,  looking like a monstrous snowman with a long tongue. Except that long tongue is a magma flow out of a mountain. Or, well, it's not a tongue. The dex helpfully informs me that it's Snowup's vomit, and said vomit is made up of fossils.

And the final stage is a snowman with more defined arms and legs, still vomiting, but this one seems to be sitting in place. Snoverdose has two horns made up of branches, and it's kind of interesting that apparently this volcano-snowman is revered as a deity of flu and they adorn it with symbols.

I am told by one of the creators of this fan-game below that the Snosebleed line is based on the Blood Falls Glacier in Antarctica, where thanks to chemical reaction with iron oxide, the snow in that specific glacier looks like it's red like blood. The formal description even uses words like the 'tongue' of a glacier, which is the explanation behind why Snowup and Snoverdose have the red snow concentrated into their tongues. And it being a constantly flowing glacier is probably why it's vomit! Pretty interesting adaptation of a specific part of the world!

Oh, 'Noot Noot' like Pengu the Penguin. Okay, I get it. Mt. Noot takes me a bit to process, but I like the idea here! I sure like it more than the actual official penguin Pokemon Eiscue. Mt. Noot is both a nesting penguin and a mountain. You can see that the little legs of the penguin is holding its egg! It's a penguin shaped like an ice mountain, and just like how real penguins cluster together to nest, Mt. Noots do the same. Except since they are also ice mountains, presumably they also merge into a larger ice mountain, forming an actual geographic formation to protect their eggs. A neat concept, if nothing else!

Oooh, this guy is the Unown equivalent? Kind of? It's this black blob with huge teeth and long arms, and it's got two armless buddies with dot-faces running around. I really like Glythic's little buddies! Apparently, the Glythics are the last relics of a lost civilizations, and different varieties exist. I wonder if they are actually meant to be like, golems and dolls in the same way Baltoy is? Or are they just glyphs and runes that come to life, like Unown? Are there multiples of the Glythic? It's something that I feel I need to go through the game to play to really find out! 

The last one I'm covering here is Hauntlet. It's a gauntlet that's haunted! I love the pun. It's a haunted winter glove that gets left behind, and ends up becoming a ghost. Very Bannette-esque, but I really do like the design. I like the spirit of the ghost poking out of the hole you insert your hand into the glove, and I like that it's got a stitched-up mouth. It reminds me of Candlemon from Digimon! I also approve of the little ghostly fireballs (iceballs?) around it as well. 

Presumably Ice/Ghost? These sort of 'you leave something behind and it will haunt you' had been a fear I had as a kid.

Hauntlet evolves into Glost the glove ghost, and it's merged with a bunch of other items! The main glove seems to have been replaced with a baseball glove, and it's got a mass of scarves that act as its body and tentacle-like arms. And it's holding two balls! Despite being a spooky ghost made up of discarded clothing, Glost's dex entries notes that all it wants to do is to play ball with people. A pretty neat ghost concept, I like it!

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I planned to do things up to 150, but I guess I really shouldn't restrict myself to fifty-per-article, and just publish things depending on how much? I do want to devote the appropriate amount of space and enthusiasm to this! So yeah, a lot of great concepts here for sure. I'm enjoying this a lot!