To play PokeSurvivor, pick a partner, keep moving, and collect experience. Your active move attacks automatically; you control positioning, switch attacks, and choose a card whenever you level up. A Bond lets several moves attack from the same active slot.
Select the attack you want active
PokeSurvivor beginner steps: start your first run
- Open the game. For a game account or a full-screen session, open the developer's website.
- Choose guest play for a temporary session, or sign in to a game-provider account if you want saved progress. This guide site does not create game accounts.
- Complete the personality questions and review the suggested partner. You can choose another starter before confirming. The starter selection contains the nine generations' 27 starters, plus Psyduck and Slowpoke.
- Start a run from the game menu. Move into open space, let your active move attack, and collect the experience dropped by defeated enemies.
- When three level-up cards appear, choose a new move, upgrade a learned move, or take a stat boost. The choice resumes your run.
The developer's guide describes the basic run. The starter list confirms the available starting partners. These are starting options, not a strength ranking.
PokeSurvivor controls on desktop and mobile
| Action | Desktop | Phone or tablet |
|---|---|---|
| Move | WASD or arrow keys | Use landscape orientation; touch and drag on the game area |
| Switch the active slot | 1–4, Q/E, or click its icon | Tap the move icon |
| Pause | Esc | Tap the pause button at the top right |
| Choose a level-up card | Select the card | Tap the card |
Click inside the embedded game before using keyboard controls. If keys are scrolling the guide instead of moving your partner, open the developer's game in its own tab and focus the game there. Landscape touch controls are documented by the developer; this is not a claim of testing every mobile browser.
Only the selected slot attacks. Learning four moves does not make four separate slots fire together. Bonds change that by joining moves inside one slot.
Make your first level-up choices
Use the three card types to answer different needs during your first run:
| Card choice | What changes | When to consider it |
|---|---|---|
| New move | Adds another attack you can switch to | You want a different attack available; only the selected slot fires |
| Move upgrade | Strengthens a move you already know | You are relying on that attack, or working toward its level-5 evolution requirement |
| Stat card | Changes your partner for this run; Power boosts damage and Sprint boosts movement speed | You need that stat, or the exact card required by a move you plan to evolve |
If you want an evolution, upgrade that move to level 5 and take its matching stat card at least once during the same run. You can take the stat card before the move reaches level 5. When the conditions are met, select the golden evolution card at a later level-up. Check the complete evolution table rather than assuming every Fire move needs the same card.
An early practical sequence is to keep one damaging attack available, learn a second attack you can switch to, and improve the attack you are relying on. Buff moves such as Swords Dance do not deal damage themselves. The game stops offering additional Buff moves after you have learned two, so the four slots cannot all fill with Buffs through normal level-up choices. This is a safeguard, not a reason to treat every Buff as useless.
Survive long enough to use your choices
- Keep space around your partner. The developer suggests wide circles so the crowd follows behind you.
- Leave filling circles and lines on the ground before the attack lands.
- Prioritize enemies that heal or shield nearby enemies when you can safely reach them.
- Switch to a useful attack for the enemies in front of you. The game's type chart differs from a main-series Pokémon battle.
- Watch for Rifts. Their legendary fights can award Bonds, but a portal is time-limited and the arena has its own deadline.
These are ways to manage a run, not a tested best build. Your partner's move pool, purchased upgrades, and the situation all affect the result.
Coins, tickets, and upgrades between runs
Use coins in the menu to buy permanent upgrades for a chosen Pokémon. These purchases belong to that Pokémon: upgrading one partner does not upgrade every other partner. They are separate from the stat cards selected inside a run.
Tickets unlock more partners through Gacha. The nine region banners are generation pools, not nine playable maps. Regular enemies sometimes drop a single ticket; ordinary Bosses and Rift legendaries can drop a ×10 ticket. The reviewed code gives Rift legendaries three single tickets and a 50% chance of one ×10 ticket, so do not plan around a guaranteed ten-pull after every Rift.
The permanent-upgrade definitions and ticket-drop code describe these separate systems.
PokeSurvivor saves: guests, cloud accounts, and offline play
Guest play is temporary in the reviewed build. The guest save lives in memory, and the game's save function skips it. Do not rely on a guest session surviving a refresh or closed tab. A game account supports the developer's cloud-save service; sign in on the developer's website for that account's progress. We cannot recover or transfer a guest save for you.
The source also has local browser accounts for its offline/local mode. That mode is different from choosing Guest in the online game. See the save paths and the developer's online guide.
You can use Add to Home Screen on the developer's website for browser-based installation. Installation does not change the game's account and saving rules. The author's itch.io page also describes a separate offline download: unzip it and open index.html, with solo play and browser storage. Its package version and current download availability have not been checked here; use the online version for cloud saves, co-op, and leaderboards.
Where to go next
- Find a move's required stat card in Move Evolutions.
- Learn when portals can appear and what a win awards in Rifts.
- Join two attacks and free a slot with Bonds.