Pokemon Go players spot weird glitch causing rocks to block ‘mons

A Pokemon Go player has discovered a visual glitch that causes a rock from the background to block a wild Pokemon from sight.

When players encounter Pokemon in Pokemon Go, they are transported to a mini arena based on their current surroundings, where they’re given a chance to catch their target.

The backgrounds in these stages tend to be basic, matching the overall aesthetic of the time and place where the Pokemon was encountered. They’re reminiscent of the battle arenas in old PS1-era JRPGs, as they have to be functional on many devices of varying levels of hardware quality.

Pokemon Go has its fair share of glitches, most of which are linked to the game’s visuals. These tend to involve the Pokemon or the human trainers, but a new bug is causing background elements to spawn front and center.

Pokemon Go Rocks block ‘Mons

A user on The Silph Road Reddit has created a thread reporting a bug that caused a rock from the background to appear at the front of the screen, blocking the wild Pokemon from view, though not preventing it from being caught.

“Gotta use Rock Smash, just like the old days,” one user joked, while another said, “I like that boulder; that is a nice boulder.”

“It never ceases to amaze me how this game breaks stuff I didn’t even know could break,” one player exclaimed, referring to the many Pokemon Go glitches that keep cropping up.

“Oh no. If this is some sort of gimmick to force AR exploration to look around the rock even when you’re not using your camera, I’m out,” one player wrote, while another said, “Had the same issue trying to catch a Corphish the other day, but at least it let me make a bad joke to my friends about rock lobsters.”

This rock glitch seems harmless enough, especially as you can still see the Pokemon’s name and CP, as well as the catch circle. Niantic still needs to make sure that the rocks stay in the background where they belong, otherwise it will look the game has been overrun by Onix and Geodude.