Guide
How it works
Every position on this site has been checked before you see it. Not “this looks difficult” — checked, in the sense that a program played out every legal move against every damage roll the game can produce. That is the whole idea, and this page explains what it means.
What a Nuzlocke run is
A Nuzlocke is a self-imposed ruleset for Pokémon games, invented in 2010 by the webcomic artist Nick Franco. The games are not hard; the challenge is added by the player. Two rules carry the whole thing:
- You may only catch the first Pokémon you meet on each route. Miss it, knock it out by accident, and that route is empty for the rest of the run. You play with what the game gives you, not with what you would have picked.
- A fainted Pokémon is dead. It gets released or boxed forever. There is no reviving, no second attempt, no reloading an earlier save.
Most players add a third: every Pokémon gets a nickname. It sounds decorative, but it is the rule that does the actual work. A team member with a name is harder to spend, and the run stops being a walkthrough and starts being a series of decisions you have to stand behind.
The consequence is a strange kind of tension. A normal Pokémon battle can be played carelessly, because the worst outcome is a trip back to the Pokémon Center. In a Nuzlocke, one turn of inattention permanently removes a team member you have used for twenty hours.
What this site takes from that
A full Nuzlocke run takes weeks. What makes it interesting, though, is concentrated in a handful of moments: a battle that has gone badly, two Pokémon left, and one move that decides whether you finish the run with your team or without it.
This site serves those moments and nothing else. You step into a Generation 9 battle that is already running — both sides worn down, the lead-in played out by the computer. Your job is not to win. Your job is to get through without losing a Pokémon.
The daily puzzle
One puzzle per day, identical for everyone who plays it. It consists of three positions with three turns each, which takes about five minutes.
You hold a position if all your Pokémon are still standing after three turns. Whether you knocked out anything of the opponent’s does not matter — the only question is whether you got out intact. At the end you get a grid of three squares you can share, in the style of the daily word games: green for held, red for lost.
Every day is the same for everybody because the puzzle is derived from its number, not drawn at random. Puzzle #224 produces the same teams, the same starting position and the same opposing moves in Helsinki as in Osaka. That is also why the result is worth comparing at all.
Played puzzles stay available in the archive, and you can replay any of them — replays are marked as such and are not counted, neither in your streak nor in the daily distribution.
The full endgame
The second mode gives you the same starting situation without the three-turn limit: four Pokémon against four, played to the end. That takes ten to fifteen minutes and asks a different question — not “can you survive three turns” but “can you carry this through”.
Afterwards you get a review of every turn: which of your moves would have cost a Pokémon against an unlucky damage roll, and which would not. Not an opinion — the same computation that generated the position.
Why “provably solvable” is meant literally
This is the part that separates the site from a random battle simulator.
Before a position is ever shown, a search runs over it. It plays every move you could legally make, and for each of them every reply the opposing AI would give, and for each of those every damage roll the game can produce — from the weakest to the strongest, hit and miss. That tree is walked until one of two things is certain:
- Safe: there is a line that gets you through without losing a Pokémon, no matter how the dice fall.
- Lost: every line loses a Pokémon, even with the best possible rolls.
Only positions of the first kind are used. So when you fail, you did not have bad luck — a solution existed, under every roll, and you did not find it. That is a harsher statement than most puzzle games can make, and it is the reason the difficulty feels fair.
What the dice decide, and what they do not
A real Pokémon battle contains far too much chance for a fair puzzle. Critical hits, sleep, paralysis, flinching — any of those can undo a correct decision. So randomness here is cut down to the part that skill can account for:
- Damage varies within the usual range, so you have to plan for the bad roll.
- Accuracy applies, so a 90 % move can miss.
- No critical hits, no secondary effects, no paralysis, no sleep, no freezing.
- Poison and burn do occur — they are predictable, and factoring them in is part of the skill.
What goes wrong is therefore your decision, not your bad luck. The opponent adds nothing to that: it is a fixed rule-based AI with no random element, so the same position always gets the same reply.
Reading the board
Your Pokémon stands at the bottom, the opponent’s at the top. Both plates show the exact HP, the status and the stat changes currently in effect. The coloured edge of a move shows its type, and moves that cannot be used right now — no PP, disabled, blocked by an item — are greyed out with the reason.
Hovering over a Pokémon shows its full set: ability, item, stats and known moves. Nothing is hidden from you. The puzzle is not about missing information; it is about what follows from the information you have.
Frequently asked
Do I need to know Pokémon to play this?
Type matchups help a lot, everything else is on the screen. The battle log explains each turn in plain sentences, so you can work out from it why something happened.
Does my streak survive on another device?
No. Results and streaks live in your browser and never reach the server, which also means there is no account to lose. Clearing your browser data clears them.
What generation and format is this?
Generation 9 singles, level 100, with sets in the style of competitive play. The engine is the same one that runs Pokémon Showdown, so the mechanics match the real games move for move.
Can I look at an old puzzle without ruining my streak?
Yes. Anything from the archive can be replayed, and replays are never counted. A puzzle you have already played can also be replayed for practice.