Pokémon fans think they’ve discovered a new, upcoming form for a Gen 4 species in Pokopia

Pokopia hit digital shelves across the world this morning, and Pokémon fans have already begun gobbling up everything the life-simulation game has to offer. In the Pocket Monster franchise’s newest title, players can find notes and other data points scattered around the island, and some fans think they’ve found a teaser for a new form for a Gen 4 species coming in Gen 10.

One of these data points, titled the “Shellos Report,” talks about the sea slug-like Pokémon from Sinnoh, Shellos—and what could be a new form for it.

“Shellos changes its color and appearance based on diet and the environment it lives in,” the entry reads. “We are researching day and night in an attempt to create a heretofore unknown yellow Shellos.”

Pokemon fans will know Shellos and its evolved form Gastrodon currently only come in two colors: pink and a greenish blue. You can get Shellos in both of its forms in Pokopia, though there’s currently no sign of a yellow form—yet, at least. We know other Pokémon species will be joining the life-simulation game in future events and updates, however, so it’s possible we may get a new yellow Shellos later on. Or, as many Pokémon fans on social media have surmised, it could be a teaser for a new color variant for the water type in Gen 10, when Winds and Waves release.

Though Shellos’s colors don’t change its typing like regional variants, it’s a fun little gimmick the species has. Shellos and Gastrodon haven’t received any special love from Game Freak in the form of Gigantamax or Mega Evolution forms like many other creatures in the franchise, so it’d be nice for the two to get something in the next generation of games, even if it’s only a new look.

So, what do you think? Are we about to see a new form for our slimy little slug friend? Or is this just a fun little note the developers left for Pokopia players? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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Marathon is finally out. The game, which saw huge activity during its free-to-play server slam, replicated its previous success by opening to over 86,000 players, this time at a $40 price tag. Of course, this is being described as a “flop” by some, because we simply cannot have nice things in 2026.

Negative narratives around basically anything nowadays tend to form rather quickly, often propagated by people (and of course bots) who never actually experienced the thing they’re hating. It seems that nowadays, following the “Fall of Concord” back in 2024, games have to blow it out of the park every single time lest they be considered complete failures.

Highguard was a recent example, and even if that game doesn’t really scream quality at the top of its lungs, it certainly didn’t deserve the hate train coming its way, boarded almost exclusively by those without any hours clocked in the title.

And now Marathon is on the chopping block.

During its development, Marathon was marred by problems and hitches. It had several directors swapped out, had a few playtests that weren’t so well-received by those who participated in them, and so on. It crossed out every prerequisite for “development hell,” indicating the actual release would be a terrible experience for Bungie and perhaps the final nail in its coffin.

But that turned out not to be true, even during the server slam. It had over 130,000 concurrent players at that point and has over 86,000 now that the game costs $40 U.S. dollars. Nothing about Marathon tells us that it’s a flop or a failure or even underperforming for that matter.

And those are just the Steam numbers, which I imagine represent about half of its total player base, if not less.

The hate train keeps chugging along, however, no matter what.

While browsing X, I spotted one user arguing that, since Marathon is performing worse than Destiny and the recently released Slay the Spire 2 (which costs about 50 percent less than Marathon), it must be considered a “complete flop of a game” and, of course, as “Concord 3.0″ (the other one being Highguard).

“Marathon is dead on arrival,” another user wrote. Dexerto, a video game outlet, also compared Slay the Spire 2‘s performance to Marathon, saying the former “beats out” Bungie’s shooter, as if the two were ever comparable, both in price and genre.

The narrative is forming and slowly being propagated by so many people and even news outlets, who use superficial arguments to frame a game as a failure despite the fact that it had probably earned over three and a half million USD if we go by Steam’s concurrent numbers alone, which are in fact much larger, especially when consoles are taken into account.

And what’s worse, it’s people who either didn’t play the game or haven’t even seen what it has to offer. Those who did say it’s a good title, with it having 81 percent positive reviews on Steam at the time of writing, which improved as the launch day progressed, and are set to grow as time goes by.

Compare that to Highguard‘s 45 percent and its myriad of regions that have it at mostly negative or even worse. Highguard was also a free game that ended up flopping, whereas Marathon is already raking in a lot of cash that should see it sustained for the foreseeable future.

Online arguments and narratives have become so toxic and tiresome, to the point where I’m almost willing to give up on trying to reason with people and to pragmatically view every single game on a case-by-case basis. Why do we have to go out of our way to frame things negatively before they’re even out or without trying them for ourselves, at least for a little while?

I have every hope that Marathon will succeed and grow into a great game, because as I noted in one of my recent features, its art direction deserves all the praise it can get, as that’d prove to developers that giving a damn about looks (not just in terms of graphics) is crucial for a successful title.

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