A surprising glitch in Pokémon Go hides Pokémon from you

A Pokémon Go player discovers a visual bug where a rock obscures a wild Pokémon.

When players encounter a Pokémon in Pokémon Go, they are transported to a mini-arena based on their current environment, where they have the opportunity to capture their target.

The backgrounds for these stages are generally simple, matching the general aesthetic of the time and place the Pokémon was encountered. They are reminiscent of the battle arenas of old JRPGs from the PS1 era, as they must be functional on many devices of varying hardware quality levels.

Pokémon Go has its share of bugs, most of which relate to the game’s visuals. These usually involve Pokémon or human trainers, but a new bug is causing background elements to appear in the foreground.

Pokémon Go rocks block Pokémon

A user on The Silph Road Reddit created a thread reporting a bug that caused a rock to appear from the background to the front of the screen, obscuring the wild Pokémon from view, although it did not does not prevent him from being captured.

Encounter hidden by rock in catch screen byu/SugarFishy917 inTheSilphRoad

“Gotta use Rock Smash, like old times,” one user joked, while another said, “I love this rock; It’s a beautiful rock.”

“It never ceases to amaze me how this game breaks things that I didn’t even know could be broken,” one player exclaimed, referring to the numerous Pokémon Go bugs that continue to appear.

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

This rock bug seems harmless enough, especially since you can still see the Pokémon’s name and PC, as well as the capture circle. Niantic, however, needs to make sure that the rocks stay in the background where they belong, otherwise it could appear that the game has been invaded by Onix and Racaillou.