💬 Oct. 2 — Anniversary Q&A: Answering your questions!
Hey, Coaches!
This Summer, many of you submitted questions to the Pocket Champs team during our 3rd Anniversary Celebrations — thank you so much for the interest you’ve shown for the game’s future and the people behind it! 🥰
Today, Madbox Elie (Community Manager) and Madbox Héracléa (Game Producer) join forces to reveal the selection of top topics you were curious about — and our team’s answer for each! 😎 Let’s dive in! 👇
💬 After 3 years what's your favorite thing about working on Pocket Champs?
As a team, our ambition has always been unanimous: making millions of people smile around the world.
So the one favorite thing isn’t something small, it’s this entire community: people enjoying our updates, getting hyped by our announcements, sharing their fanart, cheering for their event teammates… and yes, even reading super long Q&A announcements like this one!
Thank you! Making games can be tough, sure, but it’s definitely rewarding with such a lovely community!
💬 How long do you intend to keep updating Pocket Champs?
For many, many years to come — and we’re growing more ambitious every year!
Almost 5 years ago Pocket Champs began as a fun little idea for a video game, and 5 years from now we can only dream of how thrilling it could be.
So we won’t ever think “That’s it, we’re done” — we want to keep our game forever fun for this community and every update is a step towards bigger, more exciting opportunities to make awesome memories with you all!
💬 I have been playing for a very long time but I still can't get my hands on Gadgets like the Nine-Tail Fox or Dread Rocket. Can you make it easier?
It was never our intention to make some people chase the same Gadget for many months with little guarantee of ever succeeding.
With the major changes we’re planning for the Trophy Road and Gadgets, one of our goals will be to offer ways of targeting which reward you want to obtain so that you feel capable of completing your Collection.
But regardless of that, we understand part of the frustration here is because some challenges seem impossible to beat unless you already own the “perfect” Gadget. This is something we will also address in the future — we want you to always have alternatives that give you a chance to win, making it more satisfying to compete in races while you’re still completing your Collection, and not only if you have it all!
💬 At higher Leagues, some events can have really underwhelming rewards. Will you ever re-balance them to take into account overall progress?
Finding proper balance in a game that continuously receives new content can be complex — and definitely something we have struggled with when hoping to offer an exciting experience for all kinds of players no matter when they started.
Even when we’re convinced that a change will be 100% beneficial to players and the game overall, there can be surprising differences between our design intentions and how people actually engage with it — something that isn’t visible for the community but that we carefully watch for every decision we make!
All of this to say that yes — we are absolutely aware that some features are brought up a lot more often than others when people discuss their expectations for the game (such as the Fortune Wheel and what prizes should be available when finishing 1st, 2nd or 3rd), and we will keep on doing our best to address community sentiment there especially now that we’re re-thinking progression with the Trophy Road and Gadgets.
So these re-balancing efforts that started with Update 7.0 will absolutely continue — but as we’ve said in the past, changes will be done carefully step by step instead of all at once.
💬 I keep collecting Gadget Cards and Gold that I can't use anywhere in the game. Will you add more options to spend Gold in general?
We’ve recently confirmed that we’ll be expanding our Gadget progression system in the coming months — so you can look forward to using your Gold and collected Gadget Cards then, for sure.
That being said, we understand that there’s also a desire to use Gold in a variety of ways throughout the game. This is very much a valid desire from the community that we will happily explore in the future, and for which your suggestions are always welcome!
💬 I'm often confused by how easily my opponents outrun me despite having very small Power differences. Will this change in the future?
Our point of view here is that no matter how high your Power can get, whether it’s 100, 1,000 or 10,000, we still want you to feel a meaningful speed difference when you gain some Power. This is to maintain race suspense and excitement at all stages of Pocket Champs rather than calculating it proportionally.
This of course goes both ways — we know that when looking at similar Power values, our 4-stats system can make it confusing to understand why you’re faster or slower than opponents depending on terrain.
That’s actually why we tried to change this in the past when we revealed our Accessories concept in 2024, and although it didn’t pan out we still have in mind the desire to make it clearer why someone wins or loses — so yes, there may be changes in the future.
💬 I wish I could kick inactive teammates during Squad Training events. Will you ever add this option?
We know a “kick” feature for Squad Training has been a frequent request since it was introduced — the message was received loud and clear and we agree that this event has room for improvement.
But realistically, if we wanted to include such an option, we would first have to make major changes to the event’s core design to avoid negating the challenge it offers — perhaps even rework it from scratch! As you can imagine, that could take a while and we’d prefer if it didn’t come to that!
Now, that does not mean we won’t consider it — but at the moment we will give priority to other solutions and make smaller targeted improvements where possible (such as what was done for Squad suggestions in the past) in an effort to make the current iteration of Squad Training more enjoyable for all.
💬 I keep receiving Collection Tokens but there are no more rewards I can get in the Collection Awards menu. Will you add more soon?
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? We actually intend to revisit the Collection Awards feature in a similar fashion to what we recently did for the Hall of Fame — meaning not just add extra content but expand on the concept to make it more exciting and meaningful as part of your journey.
But for the rest of 2025 we will be leaving it as is to focus on more problematic areas of the game that deserve our attention first — look forward to an announcement about it next year!
💬 Can we expect to see more mini-games like Training Playground in the future?
Since the release of the Training Playground mini-game, we have chosen to refocus our efforts on strengthening the core aspects of Pocket Champs — so we’re not looking at adding more at this time.
We are, however, very glad to see people enjoying this different type of experience — even competing on Discord in a way that we didn’t intend, which is quite inspiring! Depending on how Pocket Champs evolves and what our priorities are, we will definitely consider experimenting more with gameplay variety like this. Don’t hesitate to share your suggestions!
💬 Will Champs always be a cosmetic choice only, or do you intend to give them unique perks or customization options?
We actually gave perks a try last year when we introduced the concept of Accessories — and while it was received mostly positively by experienced players for the way it spiced things up, it drove newer players away as the core experience of the game wasn’t as immediately fun, so we backtracked.
From this we learned to avoid disrupting too much of what makes Pocket Champs… well, Pocket Champs. Especially when it comes to gameplay and how demanding we want strategy to be.
Revisiting this in various other ways is still an option, though, and it might very well go through Champ customization rather than new items. For now, however, changing your Shape will remain a purely cosmetic decision while we’re focused on expanding existing gameplay areas — like Gadgets!
💬 Can we expect more Social features to be added? I'd love to race against my friends!
Making Pocket Champs much more social has always been one of our top ambitions — and it still is where we’re headed!
Over the past 3 years we’ve mentioned several of our ideas, from clubs to worldwide leaderboards, but we also ended up facing several obstacles, both technically and when it comes to designing content, that made us realize we risked half-baking our social feature concepts if we didn’t first focus on improving other core elements of our app.
We have no intention of releasing something we can’t be proud of, and we’re definitely not in any rush to add features that players might find subpar, so for now it’s on hold until we’re comfortable sharing our full vision — and you'd better believe that when we eventually get to it, we’ll get it right!
💬 Will you ever add gameplay interactions to normal races? For example, choosing multiple Gadgets and telling your Champ which one to use?
Not something we want to consider at the moment — our intention is to keep Pocket Champs as simple and accessible as possible, and a great deal of that is thanks to the idle aspect of the racing experience.
💬 I wish Squad Training would happen more frequently. Will you ever change that?
Nothing is set in stone — we are open to experimenting with the duration of our events or the rhythm for when they’re active.
Today, however, our intention is to add more regular events to the game without making it overwhelming for people to keep up with all of them — so we are quite happy with the frequency of Gadget Ascent or Squad Training.
💬 Would you consider adding a purchase option that lets us skip optional ads but still get their rewards?
Yes — we are currently exploring how it could be done. Do stay tuned!
💬 How big is the Pocket Champs Team in 2025?
Let’s just say we’re still a rather small group of (very, very friendly) people — although in comparison to the very humble beginnings of Pocket Champs, that group has since then tripled in size to make up a core game making team that suits our growing ambitions!
💬 How do you come up with new ideas for Champs, environments and the game in general?
There’s no big secret here — we just draw inspiration from what we personally enjoy in general: Food we can’t get enough of, pets who make every day brighter, movies from our childhood, games we’re currently obsessed with, and of course so many sporting events, the list goes on!
Often enough we’ll just agree on a common theme that we want to explore in-depth and find every type of reference we can think of to draft up dozens of ideas — some of which we won’t necessarily use right away but may return to months or years later!
Our creativity knows no limits when it comes to the Pocket Champs universe we’re building!
💬 I'd love to buy plushies of my favorite Champs! Any merchandising plans?
That’s definitely a dream we hope will eventually come true. Whenever we have an opportunity for this to happen, you will all definitely be the first to know — no doubts about it!
💬 What are the origins of Champs? Are they super-evolved humans? Or simply the adorable inhabitants of another world?
So far, you’ve had glimpses of the world of Champs through Gadget styles, Shape descriptions or more recently with the reveal of Island Cups.
We’re not quite ready to share more in-depth details about this universe we’re creating, but it’s absolutely something we want to expand on — in fact, we are currently working on ways to tell you more about it through future game content!
💬 I'm curious about the loading screen tips! Who wrote them? Why aren't we supposed to touch a Champ's head?!
Writing this was actually a team effort — perhaps we got a bit carried away in doing so! 😇
We did try to uncover the truth about what happens when you touch a Champ’s head… but none of us remembers writing that one! It’s like it’s always been there… and honestly, we’re too scared to find out for ourselves, so perhaps it’s best to just stay cautious and consider it a well kept-secret? 👀
And that’s it for this Questions & Answers session! We hope you enjoyed reading through it all, and that you’re excited about what the future holds for Pocket Champs! 🤗
As always, we’ll be interested in your feedback to keep building a game that you’ll enjoy forever!
Look forward to upcoming reveals of what we’re working on later in October! 🎃
In the meantime, we’ll see you on the race tracks!
- The Pocket Champs Team
👎 Not a fan of this announcement.
Published on October 2, 2025.
("Technically this was published during the final week of September, so I didn't break any promise, right?" - Madbox Elie 😇🙃😎)
