It's not really a pokemon game, the similarity basically ends at: there are weird fighting animals you catch with round objects and take research notes on. There's no evolving, combat is an active battle rather than turn-based, combat participants are unlimited, your character participates in combat directly, you can catch people, you put what you catch to work for you at your camp, plus all the survival elements.
No. Pokemon itself is definitely kidnapping and dog fighting. But at least it's cute and they disguise it a bit. This game seems (I haven't played yet, may check it out on GP) to throw off the veil and that squicks me out a bit.
Honestly if it wasn't for the Pokeball-horror, the fighting aspect would be more tolerable. It could then be pushed that you convinced pokemon to fight with you and they live good lives the rest of the time. Instead of either being in a state of stasis with the only thing they know is fighting, or being in literal prison when not fighting.
Worst most captured Pokemon only leave their Pokeball to battle themselves to exhaustion in either gladiatorial combat against another similarity trapped opponent, for the purpose of additional enslavement or simply to physically or mentally cripple their free opponent into unconsciousness.
Heh, I played it. But being super evil in that is very risky unless you have the (I forget?) psychopath trait. It's generally easier to be good in Rimworld for the shallow-end amount I've played it.
The steam page is pretty veil-off, they make it pretty clear that you gun down pals and can force them to work in factories literally to a death of starvation if you like.
I dunno if that carries through to the game, but the advertising definitely shows it
Not that I've seen at least, you can mulch a bunch of the same type to get like a better tier of it, but for like the little penguins and the big penguins, you get the big ones from eggs or as a boss so far.