Pokemon Go Celebrates April Fools' Day With New Pokemon

Pokemon Go has launched a new week-long event to celebrate April Fools' Day, and it features a brand new Pokemon. Earlier this morning, Pokemon Go launched a new event featuring increased spawns of certain "Tricky" Pokemon. These Pokemon, which include Gastly, Haunter, Voltorb, Sudowoodo, Aipom, Croagunk, and Foongus, are all known for their deceptive appearances and tendencies to play tricks. Ditto will also appear more often during the event, including in forms that it hasn't appeared in before. The event also serves to introduce Stunfisk, a strange fan-favorite Pokemon. Stunfisk will appear as a Field Research reward and will hatch from 5 KM eggs for the duration of the event.

As part of the event, Aipom and Croagunk will also photobomb players instead of Smeargle, appearing up to five times a day during the event. Players also have a chance of finding Shiny versions of Sudowoodo and Croagunk in the wild as well.

Although most of the event's festivities can be enjoyed from the comfort of your home, players were quick to point out that a player's best chance of catching Stunfisk, which will be a relatively rare Pokemon after the event is over, is to complete the "Earn 3 Candy Walking Your Buddy" Field Research task. Depending on your buddy, that means you'll have to walk between 3 KM and 15 KM, which isn't exactly a great way to maintain social distancing.

This week's event was a bit of a surprise, as Pokemon Go hadn't advertised it in advance. Instead, players in Australia and New Zealand noticed strange Pokemon spawning, including Voltorb and Foongus. As players are running out of PokeBalls because they're complying with social distance and stay at home orders, the irony wasn't lost that PokeBall-looking Pokemon were suddenly popping up in the wild to taunt them.

The April Fools event will run from today through April 7th.