Play Pokémon.
Get Paid in Crypto.
GOTCHA is a real Game-Boy-Advance Pokémon game running right inside your browser — wrapped in an interactive PokéDex device. Every Pokémon you catch pays you $GOTCHA tokens, sent straight to your Solana wallet. No download, no setup, no cartridge. Just open the site and play.
The game is our own custom hack, HEART & SOUL — a full Johto & Kanto adventure (yes, all 16 badges and a fight with Red at the top of Mt. Silver). The crypto layer is bolted on top: catch detection reads the live game, rewards settle on-chain, and your favorite catches can be minted as NFTs.
Take the #1 entertainment IP in the world, put it in a browser, and let the community earn while they play. A nostalgic game is the front door; a crypto economy is the engine.
New here? Hit Quick Start to be earning in five steps. Want the full picture? Read straight down — this doc covers everything A → Z.
Quick Start — earn in 5 steps
- Open the site. GOTCHA boots you in right before you pick your starter — standing in Professor Elm's lab. No setup, no intro to sit through, nothing to install.
- Pick your starter. Choose Chikorita, Cyndaquil, or Totodile — this is your partner for the adventure. (See the three below.)
- Sign in. Tap CONNECT and sign in with email or Google (a wallet is made for you automatically) — or connect your own Phantom. New to all this? Hit Try Demo to test-drive with a dummy wallet first.
- Play & catch. You start with 20 Poké Balls. Explore the grass, weaken a wild Pokémon, throw a ball. A real catch = a real $GOTCHA reward. Claim when the CLAIM prompt appears (sign → tokens land on-chain).
- Mint & save. Optionally mint a catch as an NFT, and press SAVE GAME to bind progress to your wallet so you can resume on any device.
CHIKORITA
Grass · steady & defensive · friendly start
CYNDAQUIL
Fire · big offense · the popular pick
TOTODILE
Water · hard-hitting · easy early gyms
Move with Arrows/WASD · Z = A · X = B ·
Enter = Start · R-Shift = Select · Q/E = L/R.
On mobile, use the on-screen D-pad + buttons. Full map (incl. the speed perk) in
Tips & Controls.
Catch 2 Earn — how earning works
This isn't a "click a button to farm tokens" game. The system watches the actual game memory. When a brand-new Pokémon truly enters your party, that's a verified catch — and only then does a reward exist. You can't fake it from the outside.
What you get
- Every catch pays $GOTCHA. The payout is decided by the server, not the client — so nobody can edit their browser to inflate it.
- Rarer Pokémon pay more. A common route-rat is a small trickle; a Legendary is a jackpot. Full breakdown in Rarity = Rewards.
- Catches before connecting are saved. Catch first, connect your wallet later — they're buffered and still claimable.
The guardrails (why they exist)
A browser emulator can never truly prove a catch to a server, so the design doesn't try to be un-cheatable — it makes cheating pointless and bounded instead:
- Wallet signature on every claim — stops spoofing.
- Playtime gate — a catch is only claimable after a few seconds of real play, so you can't instant-drain the faucet. Normal play clears it without noticing.
- Per-claim cap — a batch of catches per claim, with Legendaries limited per claim.
- Cooldown — a handful of claims, then a short cooldown (good time to go raid the socials).
- Daily caps — a per-wallet daily limit and a global daily budget, so the treasury can't be emptied in a day.
The long-game plan is to make money flow IN (paid NFT mints, spins) more than it trickles OUT (the catch faucet). The faucet is the hook; the sinks are the engine. All these numbers are live-tunable — they get balanced as the economy grows.
Rarity = Rewards
Higher rarity, higher reward — for both catching and minting. There are three tiers:
| Tier | What it is | Catch reward | As an NFT |
|---|---|---|---|
| COMMON |
Your everyday route Pokémon — Pidgey, Rattata, Sentret, and friends. | A small, steady trickle of $GOTCHA. The grind that adds up. | Cheap to mint. The bulk of your collection. |
| LEGENDARY |
The big ones — birds, beasts, the box art gods. ~25 across the game. | A jackpot payout, many times a common. Capped per claim so it stays special. | Premium mint. The trophy pieces. |
 SHINY |
The alternate-colored 1-in-thousands version of any species. | Top tier — a multiplier on top of the species' base reward. | Highest-value mint, flagged Shiny: true in metadata forever. |
So a shiny Legendary is the holy grail of catch-rewards. Hunting shinies (see Tips for the method) is the spicy end-game of catch-to-earn.
Exact token amounts are intentionally not carved in stone here — they're balanced live as the economy matures. The ordering is the promise: common < legendary < shiny, every time.
Minting NFTs — own your catches
Catching pays you tokens. Minting turns a catch into a collectible you truly own. Tap Mint on a catch, sign in your wallet, and the server mints a Metaplex NFT of that exact species straight to you — with our custom sprite art and the Pokémon's level baked into the metadata.
- It's yours. The NFT lives in your wallet. View it, hold it, trade it, flex it.
- Tiered price. Commons are cheap to mint; Legendaries and Shinies cost more — and are worth more.
- Mint fees feed the Vault. 100% of what you pay to mint flows back into the reward pool and the gacha — see The Vault. Demand in → rewards + buybacks out → the token gets a floor and players get paid.
- Daily mint cap per wallet keeps things sane.
Two reasons today: you get a permanent, ownable, tradeable piece of your run — and every mint strengthens the whole economy you're earning in. But the real reason is still under wraps…
The Mystery — what are the NFTs really for?
CLASSIFIED — TRAINERS ONLY
Here's the truth: the full use-case of your minted Pokémon is still a secret. Holding them now is holding a key to something that hasn't opened yet. Early collectors will be glad they were early.
What we can hint at: your collection is the key. Picture it…
Every mint rolls the gacha — a shot at a real Collector Crypt grail ticket on top of your NFT.- Holy-grail pulls — rare vintage / 1-of-1 graded cards via the Collector Crypt gacha, for the lucky few.
Catch. Mint. Stack your collection now. When it all unlocks, the trainers holding the most — and the rarest — are the ones at the front of the line. That's all we're saying.
The Flywheel — why this spins up
"Play Pokémon and get paid" isn't a gimmick — it's a loop that feeds itself. Each part makes the next part stronger:
- Play → it's a genuinely fun, full Pokémon game. People show up for the game.
- Catch → every catch is a real $GOTCHA reward. Earning while playing.
- Earn → tokens in players' wallets = skin in the game = reasons to come back.
- Mint → players spend $GOTCHA to mint NFTs; that spend is held + burned → supply down.
- Token value → rewards out are bounded, sinks pull supply down → the token has a floor and a reason to hold.
- More players → a fun game + a real economy + collectible grails = word spreads → back to the top, spinning faster.
Most P2E games are pure faucets that bleed out and die. Ours is built so the sinks (mints + the gacha) outpace the faucet. The game keeps people here; the economy keeps the token alive. That's the flywheel.
The Vault & Economy — where the money goes
Every dollar that moves through GOTCHA runs through one on-chain Vault, built on a rule that sounds almost unfair: the trainers win. The team doesn't skim the pot — trading fees buy the token back, and what players spend is held, burned, or handed straight back to the community.
TRADING + LP FEESEvery trading and liquidity fee the token earns is used to buy back $GOTCHA off the open market — supporting the price, refilling the player reward pool, stocking the gacha, and burning a share for good. Nothing leaves for a team wallet.
MINT + COSMETIC SPENDEvery $GOTCHA spent minting an NFT or unlocking a cosmetic is held out of circulation, then burned (deflation) or given back to players through events and rewards. Each mint is also a ticket toward a real Collector Crypt grail pull.
THE VAULTHolds the pot and pays out under strict, server-side rules — per-claim caps, a per-wallet daily limit, and a hard global daily budget — so rewards stay sustainable and the Vault can't be drained in a day. Payouts settle on-chain where anyone can verify them. The exact numbers are live-tunable as the economy grows.
Fees buy back the token. Mints refill rewards and stock the lottery. Playing earns. Every loop points value back at the people actually playing — not a faucet that bleeds out, a flywheel that pays in.
100% of trading + LP fees go into buybacks and the ecosystem; everything players spend is held, burned, or returned to the community. The house isn't taking a cut — in this economy, the house is the players.
SEE THE LIVE VAULT — ON-CHAIN ▸
Don't trust — verify. Reward pool, mint revenue & gacha pool, live on-chain.
Our Mission & Goals
Short version: bring the world's biggest game community on-chain, and become a real Pokémon game people choose to play — that also happens to pay. Here's where we're headed:
100 TRAINERS ONLINE
First real milestone: 100 players catching in the same live world at once. Social multiplayer (ghosts, world chat, avatars) is already wired — now we fill it.
THE NEXT BIG POKéMON GAME
Not a side-quest token — a game good enough that people play it for the game first, and the rewards are the bonus. Fun is the moat.
CUSTOM GAME MODES
Nuzlocke, randomizer, races, tournaments, community challenges — the engine already supports wild rule-sets. Imagine catch-to-earn Nuzlocke ladders.
HIGHER-GEN WORLDS
Heart & Soul is chapter one. The same GOTCHA shell can run more hacks and later-gen adventures — new regions, new Pokémon, same wallet & collection.
THE DAY CARE
Park a Pokémon in the Day Care and it earns for you while you are away. Soon your NFTs do real work, not just sit as gacha tickets. Level and rarity will count.
A MULTI-ROM SANDBOX
Long-term, GOTCHA is a platform: many games, NFT collections, and brand collabs running on one reusable on-chain layer.
Every catch, mint, and trainer online pushes us toward all of it. You're not just playing — you're early.
About the game: HEART & SOUL
Lots of players have never touched a Johto game — totally fine. Here's what you're loading.
Heart & Soul is a fan-made remake of Pokémon HeartGold & SoulSilver (the Gen-4 Johto remakes), rebuilt to run on Game Boy Advance hardware. So if you follow an HGSS guide, you'll feel right at home — the broad path is the same:
- Start in New Bark Town, pick a starter, travel across Johto earning 8 badges.
- Beat the Johto Elite Four, then sail to Kanto for 8 more badges.
- 16 badges total → unlock Mt. Silver and the final battle against Red.
- Plus tons of bonus content: every Legendary, the three roaming beasts, choose-a-legendary events, even a Hoenn starter and grails hidden across both regions.
No long intro, no settings menu to wade through. The live site drops every player into a locked boot state inside Professor Elm's lab — right before you choose your starter. That's deliberate: a forced fair start, so everyone begins from the exact same spot under the same rules (it's also part of the anti-cheat — nobody re-rolls difficulty or settings for an edge). Pick Chikorita, Cyndaquil, or Totodile and your adventure begins.
Getting Started — your first hour
A spoiler-light path from waking up to your first Gym Badge. Tap a chapter to open it.
1 New Bark Town — pick your partner
You wake up in your bedroom. Grab the Potion from the PC in the corner (Item Storage → Withdraw). Peek in your Bag — you already have an EXP Share; turning it on spreads experience to your whole team, which keeps everyone leveled. Head downstairs: Mom gives you your Pokégear (the Map is your best friend) and Running Shoes.
You actually boot in right here, at the big building — Elm's Lab — the moment before Professor Elm lets you choose a starter:
- Chikorita — Grass. Steady, defensive, friendly early game.
- Cyndaquil — Fire. Great offense, the popular pick.
- Totodile — Water. Hard-hitting, easy mode for the first gyms.
Check its Summary to learn the basics: type (some moves hit harder than others), Ability, and Nature (nudges stat growth). Then Elm sends you to find Mr. Pokémon. Heal at the machine in the lab if needed, and head west to Route 29.
2 Route 29 → Cherrygrove City
Route 29 is your first grass WILD POKéMON. You can't catch yet (no balls), but you can battle to level up. Free stuff to grab: talk to Tuscany of the Weekday Family and answer Tuesday for a Silk Scarf (a useful held item), and shake the berry tree for Oran Berries (in-battle healing).
Tip: the little overworld sprites walking a route tell you what's catchable there. Continue west into Cherrygrove City. An old man gives you a tour — the red-roof building is the Pokémon Center (free healing + your PC box), the blue-roof one is the Poké Mart. Then head north to Route 30.
3 Mr. Pokémon & your first rival
Up Route 30, visit Mr. Pokémon's house (grab the Oran Berries outside). He hands you the Mystery Egg, and Professor Oak shows up to give you the Pokédex. Elm then calls — head back toward New Bark.
On the way out of Cherrygrove, that pushy kid challenges you: your first rival battle. He always picks the starter that beats yours, so expect a tough fight — chip him down and use Potions. Back at the lab you learn he stole that Pokémon; you get to name your rival, hand over the egg, and — finally — Elm's assistant gives you 5 Poké Balls.
The moment you have Poké Balls, every wild catch starts paying $GOTCHA. Connect your wallet and the earning begins. Buy more balls in Cherrygrove — every 10 bought gives a free Premier Ball.
4 Route 30/31 → Violet City
Now you can take the path that was blocked before. Battle the trainers (Youngster Joey's Rattata is a rite of passage), grab berries and an Antidote, and push north through Route 31. There's a Dark Cave entrance worth a peek (Larvitar, Dunsparce, Teddiursa lurk there). Then head west into Violet City — your first Gym town.
Before the Gym, clear Sprout Tower to the north: a fun early dungeon that rewards you with HM05 Flash and good early experience.
5 Violet Gym — Badge #1 (Falkner)
Leader Falkner uses Flying-types — a Lv 8 Pidgey and a Lv 11 Noctowl (it holds a Sitrus Berry to heal once). Counter with Electric or Rock moves if you have them; otherwise just out-level him and watch for that one heal.
Win and you earn the Zephyr Badge (boosts your Pokémon's Attack) and TM32 (Double Team). One down, fifteen to go. From here the Mystery Egg eventually hatches into Togepi if you keep walking with it in your party.
The full route continues to Azalea, Goldenrod, and beyond. For the complete town-by-town path, encounter tables, and puzzle solutions, the community Heart & Soul documentation in our Discord is the deep reference. This guide just gets you rolling.
Tips, Controls & FAQ
Controls
| Action | Keyboard | On the PokéDex / mobile |
|---|---|---|
| Move | Arrow keys or WASD | On-screen D-pad |
| A (confirm) | Z | A button |
| B (back / run) | X | B button |
| Start (menu) | Enter | START |
| Select | Right Shift | SELECT |
| L / R (shoulder) | Q / E | L / R buttons |
| Speed | — | SPEED 1× · 2× · 3× · 4× |
Fast-forward is free at 1×. Hold $GOTCHA to unlock faster play: 2× = 1M · 3× = 3M · 4× = 5M $GOTCHA held (it reads your live balance — you unlock it by holding, you never spend it). Grinding doesn't pay more: rewards are clamped to real time played, so fast-forward just saves you time.
On mobile: tap the on-screen D-pad + A/B/START/SELECT. Open the controls sheet for L/R, sound & speed. Play in landscape for the full PokéDex view.
Shiny hunting (top-tier rewards)
For wild Pokémon in grass, caves, or water: just keep running around and re-encountering — each fresh encounter re-rolls the shiny chance. For gift Pokémon, you'd save (real save, not save-state) and soft-reset. Shinies are the highest catch + mint reward in the game.
Make money (in-game) faster
- Sell Apricorn balls and Bug-Catching-Contest rewards.
- Sell Magikarp caught at the Lake of Rage.
- After visiting the Fuchsia Safari Zone, talk to Baoba for payouts.
Good to know
- Time of day matters. Day = 6am–6pm, Night = 6pm–6am — different Pokémon appear. Change the clock at a Pokémon Center if needed.
- Level caps (if you turned them on) scale up after each badge, keeping the game challenging.
- Mt. Silver / Red unlock after you collect all 16 badges — talk to Oak.
- Apricorn / special balls are made by Kurt in Azalea Town and are type-effective — read the Berries info for which works on what.
- SAVE often. Press SAVE GAME to store progress locally and to your wallet's cloud slot — resume on any device by connecting the same wallet.
Crypto FAQ
- What wallet? Easiest: sign in with email or Google — a Solana wallet is made for you (Privy), no app needed. Crypto-native? Connect your own Phantom. A little SOL covers tiny network fees.
- Is it free to play? Yes. Catching and claiming cost only tiny network fees. Minting costs $GOTCHA (that's the point — it's a sink).
- Where do my NFTs show up? In your connected wallet. On devnet some wallets hide collectibles — they're still on-chain and viewable on an explorer.
- Can I lose progress? Not if you press SAVE — it syncs to your wallet. A fresh start always boots from a fair locked state.
GOTCHA — monetizing the #1 IP in the world, bringing its whole community on-chain. An open sandbox of what's possible. Catch. Earn. Evolve.
This is a community fan project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo, Game Freak, or The Pokémon Company. Crypto features are experimental — play with a burner wallet and never spend more than you can afford to lose.