• Capcom and Pokémon GO developer Niantic have announced the launch of Monster Hunter Now.
• This is the series’ first mobile entry and condenses everything people love about the franchise into an experience similar to Niantic’s previous mobile gaming sensation.
• Monster Hunter Now is available worldwide on iOS and Android.

The mobile version of Monster Hunter that will play like Pokémon GO, Monster Hunter Now has launched worldwide on Thursday.

According to the launch announcement from creator Niantic, the maker’s of Pokémon GO, the game was in development for four years and “was designed to provide a hunting experience that blends seamlessly into your everyday life, with effortless one-handed play, 75-second bitesize hunts with epic monsters that bring you the highlights of the franchise, and a Paintball feature that allows you to mark monsters for later.”

Last year Capcom explained that the game would be a mobile walking adventure, where you walk in real life across an area to different locations where you can encounter famous monsters from the series as well as other treasures and items. Once you encounter monsters in the real world, you then enter a fighting mode similar to mainline titles in the Monster Hunter series.

According to Niantic, Monster Hunter and Pokémon GO fans can look forward to features like AR Camera Mode, where iconic monsters from the series like Rathalos and Diablos will appear in real time right on your smartphone screen. You can even interact with them to see their reactions.

There is also a multiplayer mode with Group Hunt. Niantic explains, “Encounter a monster that you might struggle to take down alone? Group Hunt makes it easy to recruit others to help. It automatically matches with you with nearby hunters so you can team up.”

You can match up with up to three other hunters at a time for a full party of four. These players can be added as friends using a friend or QR code, in order to play with them in the future. Group Hunt also allows you to earn special rewards like recovery pills and paintballs.

The ‘feeling’ of the franchise is being conserved in the mobile game, available on iOS and Android, with loadouts coming to the game. Hunters can change up their equipment, weapons and items depending on the situations they are encountering.

Meanwhile the “town” or where usually you would go to visit the blacksmith, shops and mission boards are now all simply selected from the game’s UI.

Monster Hunter Now is an ever-evolving game and we plan to introduce more new monsters and weapon types going forward. One big update is already in the works, which we hope to announce to you before the end of the year!” adds Niantic.

While Monster Hunter is more mainstream than ever with the launch of Monster Hunter World and then Monster Hunter Rise, the franchise isn’t as ubiquitous as Pokémon but perhaps the Pokémon GO formula – which exploded in popularity to a worldwide peak of 28 million daily active users in 2016 – can breath new life into Niantic and take Monster Hunter even further.