Video Game / Pocket God

In Ep 1, all you could do was pick the Pygmies up and throw them. Seriously.

What kind of god would you be? Benevolent or vengeful? Play Pocket God and discover the answer within yourself.

—Bolt Creative

Pocket God is a smash-hit app and god game for the iPod Touch/iPhone. The app was created by Dave Castelnuovo and Allan Dye, of Bolt Creative, a San Francisco-based developer. In Pocket God, you play as a god who has control over a race of islanders called "Pygmies". You can reward them with gifts or kill them. There can be up to six pygmies at a time and if killed, you can bring them back. You also have control over other things as well, such as animals and the weather. The app is constantly updating and has had forty-seven episodes released so far. Plenty more are to come.

The app has received a comic book adaptation, which has been well received.

It has received a sequel/spin-off known as "Pocket God: Journey To Uranus".

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This game provides examples of:

• All Animals Are Dogs:
  • The Barking Spider barks and whines like a dog.
  • The turtle in the Moron Pests minigame growls like a dog when the Pygmy first disturbs it.
• All Just a Dream: Anything that takes place on the Island of Misfit Crossovers happens in a Pygmy's dream. If he gets killed there, it still acts like he got killed like in the real world.
• Apocalypse How: The Series Fauxnale, where the God of Death is awakened using a baby and the Pygmies must collect gems to defeat him.
• Artistic License – Paleontology:
  • The Tyrannosaurus Rex didn't exist in the time of Pangaea. Neither did human ancestors or even primates for that matter.
  • There are hominoids and dinosaurs existing together in the same time/place.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Barking Spider, Beetles and the Locust Queen are more than twice as large as the Pygmies..
• Bigger on the Inside: Inside the snake in the Island of Misfit Crossovers. Its stomach is infinitely long as the Pygmy runs inside trying to escape. Justified in that this is in a dream world.
• Blow You Away: One of your many god powers is the ability to create hurricanes.
• Bloodless Carnage: The things you can do to the Pygmies and yet they don't spill a drop.
• Bowdlerize: Pygmies were renamed "Oogs", but only temporarily.
• Butt-Monkey: The Pygmies never catch a break since their god is always torturing them through many ways.
• The Cameo: Doodle the Doodler appears as an enemy in the Ooga Jump minigame.
• Crossover: With The Creeps!, Harbour Master, Trenches and The Moron Test.
• Cerebus Syndrome: The updates towards the end of the original game's lifespan gradually slip towards more and more nightmarish concepts, eventually climaxing in a Mayan Doomsday Story Arc with a fate-deciding battle with Lord Xenu.
• Cloudcuckoolander : Charlie constantly spouts out random phrases that appear to be nonsense (ex. "I'm a total freakin' rock star from Mars.") and is unaffected by some things that would normally harm Pygmies; it's somewhat donwplayed with the sayings, however, since Charlie is based on Charlie Sheen and the phrases are based on things his characters have said.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In the Battle of the Gods mini-game, there are situations where if you kill the AI but they would get a healing power-up at the end of the turn, they'll survive despite technically having 0 HP. Word of advice: don't assume that strategy will work for you.
• Cruel Player-Character God: There are twelve gifts and ninety-nine sacrifices. The game encourages you to torture the Pygmies for your own amusement.
• Darker and Edgier: Later updates seem to make the sacrifices more violent and nightmarish.
• Death Mountain: Ape Mountain. Fitting, considering the location's features are all about sacrificing Pygmies to a giant ape. It is also the first area to not feature any water.
• Death Is Cheap: There are only six Pygmies (eight if you count Charlie and Tom), and you can bring them back once they've died.
• Downloadable Content: The game has a DLC store, which has various customisation packs. Most of them are skin packs.
• Dream Land: The Island of Misfit Crossovers. To access it for the first time, you have to tap the dream bubble above a sleeping Pygmy.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: To reiterate, when this app was first released, all you could do was pick the Pygmies up and throw them around, and that's it.
• Easter Egg: Three of them:
  • Hold a meteor in front of the sun to cause an eclipse. This can protect the vampire Pygmy when the sun is out.
  • Tapping the Sand Island statue threes times in succession cause it to vapourise all Pygmies and says: "You know you like Pocket God."
  • After cooking a Pygmy over the fire on Rock Island, drop it in the ice hole on Ice Island to create a geyser which sends icicles showering down on Pygmies below.
• Eldritch Abomination: The giant demon in the background of the Lava Tube. It doesn't do anything to the Pygmies since it lurks in the background, but is still a menacing demonic figure.
• Electric Jellyfish: Found in the Coral Reef, they can electrocute Pygmies and also suffocate them when worn as helmets.
• Endless Game: The Ooga Jump, Pain Drain, The Runs, Konkey Dong, Moron Pests and Dance Dance Execution minigames all keep going until you die.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: You can create double rainbows. See Shout-Out.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: You can bury Pygmies in a grave which turns them into zombies on Graveyard Island. They then walk about and bite other Pygmies, turning them to zombies as well.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Invoked since you are playing God and can kill Pygmies with pretty much anything, including drowning, being eaten alive by ants, burnt by a volcano, the sun, or a magnifying glass, and much more.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Facehugger jellyfish reproduce like this in "Call of Booty."
• Gasshole: One of the idle animations has the Pygmy fart. And then there's the "Fart Dance"...
• Giant Spider: The Barking Spider is much larger than the Pygmies. Also a boss battle.
• A God Is You: You are free to do as you will with the Pygmies and the environment surrounding them, and they won't do that much besides idle animations unless you interact with something; this includes sacrificing them or giving them stuff to do.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: The God Idols are collected by doing tasks related to them, mainly by discovering all the possible ways to kill a Pygmy. There are 48 in all, each representing an update/"episode", and they can be used in the Battle of the Gods.
• An Ice Person: The Ice Monster that sleeps off the coast of Ice Island. The top of his head looks like an iceberg, and flicking Pygmy at him will wake him up and start his boss battle.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice:
  • If you tap the statue in the Underwater Area, it will shoot out a spear at high-speed. Naturally, the game allows you to make "Pygmy Kebobs". There's even a microgame where you try to see how many Pygmies you can spear at once.
  • Activating the geyser on Ice Island will send icicles showering down, stabbing Pygmies in the head or back.
• Just Eat Him: Most the wildlife in the game (except for dodo birds, monkeys, fish, and swordfish) kill the Pygmies by eating them. The boss monsters do this to gain health.
  • The Ice Monster, on the other hand, can accidentally eat Pygmies if they are flicked at it when its mouth is open, and this actually does damage instead (according to Bolt Creative, this is because of indigestion).
• Literally Shattered Lives: Frozen Pygmies can be shattered by tapping them, and the Ice Monster breaks into a million pieces when defeated.
• Making a Splash: Another one of your god powers is the ability to create a tsunami. Surprisingly, it's not used to kill Pygmies. Instead, you use it to take them to the Underwater Area and Coral Reef.
• Mama Bear: According to the help menu, the Tyrannosaurus Rex and Barking Spider are female, and are only attacking to protect their babies.
• Monochromatic Eyes: Zombie Pygmies have them as they're undead.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: No death that these pygmies suffer can keep em down forever: they can be respawned on command.
  • When killed on Graveyard Island, they become ghosts and can't spawn until you somehow get rid of their souls(such as having them drag a living pygmy away). When killed by plague, they can't spawn until their infected bodies are burned in a fire.
  • The comic reveals that the reason they don't die forever is that their Jewel of Life keeps them from suffering permanent deaths.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Charlie can turn into a High Priest Vatican Assassin Warlock.
• No-Sell:
  • Charlie is immune to a couple of the things that can kill regular pygmies.
  • The Barking Spider is apparently unaffected by the plague, since it won't throw up and die after eating an infected pygmy.
• Off with His Head!: If you try to pull a Pygmy too hard when its in the ice squid's grip, it gets decapitated.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The Vampire Pygmy. It doesn't bite Pygmies or suck their blood. It just knocks them into the ocean.
• Our Zombies Are Different: The Zombie Pygmies sport blue skin, pupil-less white eyes and have the classic zombie gait. They also perform the Thriller and Smooth Criminal dances.
• Oxygen Meter: Appears after a Pygmy retrieves the first treasure in "Call of Booty." He'll die if he runs out of oxygen.
• The Plague: The fountain in the Plague Chamber. Pygmies can play in the fountain, which infects them, and can then spread the disease to most of the items that Pygmies interact with.
• Potty Emergency: If a Pygmy takes too long in the outhouse, a nearby Pygmy will start waiting, and if you let them keep waiting, they will eventually burst.
• Pun-Based Title: Some of the episode names:
  • Ep 3: You Always Hurt the Ones You Lava
  • Ep 29: The Pyg Chill
  • Ep 31: What's the Story, Morning Gory?. See Shout-Out.
  • Ep 34: Monkey See, Monkey Chew
  • Ep 46: Germs of Endearment
• Schizo Tech: Despite being set in the time of Pangaea, the outhouse on Rock Island has a flushing toilet, the underwater area has a shark with a laser gun strapped to its head and a sunken pirate ship in the background, there is a jetpack in the "Ooga Jump" minigame, the Pygmies get electric guitars in "The Pocket God Update Song", and the Dance Chamber in the Apocalypse Temple has a disco.
• Shock and Awe:
  • One of your god powers is lightning, which can be used for striking Pygmies (and dodo birds and monkeys), or starting a bonfire.
  • And then there's the jellyfish that electrocute Pygmies.
• Shout-Out:
  • When a Pygmy is possessed by a Ghost Pygmy, their head rotates 360 degrees, then they throw up.
  • "Ep 28: Barking Spider, Crouching Pygmy"
  • "Ep 31: What's the Story, Morning Gory", which is a reference to the album "(What's the Story) Morning Glory?" by Oasis.
  • The zombie Pygmies can do the Thriller dance and Smooth Criminal dance, while the Vampire Pygmy can perform "Staying Alive", with ordinary Pygmies serving as back-up dancers!
    • Ordinary Pygmies can do the Napoleon Dynamite dance.
  • In the alien world skin pack, you can change the meteor into a interrogation Droid and the spear into a lightsaber, the t-rex egg into an alien egg, and can turn the Sand Island statue into the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
  • The retro gamer skin pack, which contains references to Mario, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, Sonic, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Tetris, Centipede, Galaga, Dig Dug, and Qbert.
  • The demon that appears in the lava tube is a tribute to Ronnie James Dio.
  • "Ep 35: Double Rainbow All the Way Across the Sky" is a reference to the Double Rainbow Meme. The Pygmies even shout quotes from the video when they see them. In fact, their voices for those quotes are actually Paul "Yosemite Bear" Vasquez's voice (the guy from the video), except digitally doctored.
  • Ep 36: Konkey Dong. The character's name is a pun on DK's name, and the minigame is in the style of the first Donkey Kong game, including Konkey Dong throwing boulders like DK throws barrels, and the Pygmy being able to wield a hammer like Mario/Jumpman.
  • The sacrifice for being hit by a beetle in the Konkey Dong minigame is called "Beetlejuiced!".
  • Charlie, a 7th Pygmy who talks about winning, and shouts Charlie Sheen quotes. He also can turn into a tiger (because he has tiger blood and Adonis DNA) and a High Priest Vatican Assassin Warlock. The episode was called "Two and a Half Pygmies" to drive the point home.
  • And now there's Tom, who's basically another Charlie, only this time he says Tom Cruise quotes and is a catalyst of the Apocalypse.
• Sixth Ranger: Charlie, a seventh Pygmy. See Shout-Out.
• Solar-Powered Magnifying Glass: You can use a large magnifying glass to incinerate ants and Pygmies.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The music for the Coral Reef is a soothing choir, yet the area features a lot of the more disturbing sacrifices.
• Spikes of Doom: In the Pain Drain, and the Pygmy dies if he slides down too fast and hits them.
• Stripped to the Bone:
  • You can make fire ants and locusts swarm Pygmies, which reduces them to skeletons.
  • If a Pygmy falls in lava in 'The Runs' minigame, they will burst into flames, leaving only a skeleton.
• Super Drowning Skills: Pygmies will drown when they fall in the water.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: In the Underwater Area and Coral Reef, the Pygmies never run out of air, which causes a logic problem with the before mentioned Super Drowning Skills.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: On the Pocket Blog, about the Underwater Skin Pack:
  Allan Dye: You can make your island an underwater paradise, with flying dodo fish and sponge doodlers who in no way resemble Spongebob Square Pants. Okay, maybe a little.
• Take That!:
  • A comment on the Pocket God Update song:
    Allan Dye: And yes, the pygmies do what any good boy band would do...lip-sync!
  • The Pocket God Update Song itself is a Take That! at fans who constantly expect weekly updates.
• Tear Off Your Face: One of the more nightmarish sacrifices, with one way to trigger it being a monkey chewing a Pygmy's face off.
• Tentacled Terror: The ice squid can eat Pygmies. Or pull their head off!
• Terrified of Germs: A side-effect of letting a Pygmy play in the purification fountain. They look around nervously, and try to disinfect everything. It eventually kills them.
• Threatening Shark: The shark. You can feed Pygmies to it, drop it on their head, knock them into the water with it, or let them (attempt) to catch it...
• Too Dumb to Live: The Pygmies. They'll eat burnt food (which they choke on) and swordfish (which stabs them), and no matter how many times they are brought back, they will continue to eat them.
• Video Game Caring Potential: You can reward the Pygmies with gifts such as food, fishing rods, bonfires and dancing...
• Video Game Cruelty Potential:
  • ... or you can kill them in a load of different ways: Drowning, flicking, striking with lightning, volcanic eruption, feeding to sharks, feeding to tyrannosaurus rex, feeding the barking spider, feeding to squid, incinerating with magnifying glass, cooking over fire, impaling on spikes, choking on food, thrown off a cliff... the list goes on!
  • You can also use a few things on the dodo bird and monkeys such as zapping them with lightning.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: One of the things that happens to a possessed Pygmy is that they throw up (see Shout-Out), and vomiting is one of the symptoms suffered by those infected with The Plague (including certain animals that eat them).
• Weakened by the Light: Vampire Pygmies are killed by sunlight.
• Zombie Gait: The Zombie Pygmies walk this way when brought back from the dead.

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