Did you know there is a Pokémon Go for Catholics? ✝️
Instead of catching Pokémon, players have to add saints, blesseds and biblical figures to their evangelisation team.
It is true. You can now replace Poké Balls with knowledge about saints and your yellow, red or blue team with the Evangelisation Team. Get ready, because Follow JC Go has just been launched: a Catholic version of the Pokémon Go hit.
With a budget of about half a million euros and 32,000 hours devoted to developing the technology, this promises to be a unique experience even for the most unbelieving. According to an interview with the director of the Fundación Ramón Pané, which created the app, Pope Francis is already a fan even though he is not very given to technology.
How does it work?
Follow JC GO may look, at first glance, like an exact copy of Pokémon Go, but the similarities stop at real-time geolocation and daily challenges. In this game, players have only non-violent and highly religious mechanics available.
Just as in the cartoon version, it is the smartphone camera that builds the environment and the characters appear through virtual reality. Here, however, you can see saints, blesseds or figures from the Bible. Although anyone can play it, Follow JC Go requires some biblical knowledge. For example, when you find a saint, you have to answer questions about him or passages from the Christians' sacred book.
SIC Notícias gives us an example: if Moses asks the player whether it was he who said “My God, why have you forsaken me?” and the player gets it right, the character joins their team. So, instead of catching Pokémon and fighting with them, players collect saints and various religious objects in order to form an “evangelisation team” that will follow Jesus.
In the app description, it is said that the end of the game will take the sacred group to meet the Pope at World Youth Day in 2019, in Panama.
Gotta Praise ‘Em All
Besides these tasks, players have to keep their avatars' bodies healthy, maintaining a good level of food and hydration, but the spirit must also be well, which can be achieved through prayers. During the game, participants are asked to pray for sick people.
By all accounts, you are even required to go into every church you find along the way. Do you remember that, at the height of the Pokémon Go craze, several people were arrested for trying to catch Pokémon in churches and on private land?
Currently, the game is available for Android and iOS, but only in the Spanish version. As you would expect, some comments and ratings, from people not very fond of the Catholic Church, did not take long to appear. Things such as “my Jesus doesn't evolve”, “I can't choose Satan as the main player” or “I can't invade other countries on the grounds that it is a holy war” have already started circulating on the internet.
