Dev Insights: Creating Delightful Artistic Immersion with GO Snapshot

While Pokémon is known for a few key core game mechanics—encountering wild Pokémon, engaging in battle, trading, and more—there is also an undeniable focus on the bond between Trainer and Pokémon. Adding color and personality to Pokémon, and also creating meaningful opportunities for interaction with them, has been something our team has thought about for a long time.

GO Snapshot is a logical extension of the AR+ feature that the game already had for taking AR photos. However, GO Snapshot is both simpler to use and a more personal experience for Trainers. Previously, Trainers were limited to taking photos of Pokémon that they encountered in the wild. Now, there are many useful improvements that Pokémon photographers will find appealing.

Many Trainers have become experienced in working around the limitations of AR+ to create striking images of Pokémon, such as toggling AR+ to get correct placement or keeping Special Research encounters to take photos of Legendary Pokémon at a variety of locations. With GO Snapshot, Trainers can easily take a photo of any Pokémon currently in their Pokémon Storage. You can even control placement of your Pokémon in the photo by throwing the Pokémon’s Poké Ball before you take a photo. You can also guide the Pokémon by brushing across it to get its attention, making it much easier to find the perfect angle for photos. If a dynamic photo is what you’re after, tapping the Pokémon will make it move around or show off a move.

In addition to a more convenient and simplified photo setup, Trainers will notice that the Pokémon that they take photos of have a sense of presence and weight to them. GO Snapshot utilizes new shadows for each Pokémon, displaying a sense of size and motion as they arrive into a scene. Scale is also key, and GO Snapshot will subtly guide Trainers to find the perfect setting for Pokémon of all sizes.

We hope that GO Snapshot delivers a sense of immersion for all the devoted fans of Pokémon, providing Trainers with a new way to interact with their favorite Pokémon and take captivating photos to share with friends. We are always thinking deeply about creating meaningful moments between Trainer and Pokémon, and GO Snapshot is one in a series of features we hope to bring to Pokémon GO that focuses on this theme.

Thank you so much for all of your creative and amazing photos. We’re looking forward to seeing how GO Snapshot opens the door for even more possibilities.

—The Pokémon GO team