Only five days to go before Valentine’s Day comes upon us, with all the rush and fuss and mostly private celebrations it implies. If you’re of that age with somebody special in mind, you could join the crowd buying up bouquets of flowers, or buy a box of chocolates (special attention to Japan, where only the girls are buying chocolate for the guys they like, with the lucky men being obliged to repay the women with chocolate one month later). Or you could spring for a romantic dinner anywhere from a classy restaurant or an eating joint that has a special promo for couples on a budget; fine and good.

But if you’re not with anybody or simply not that into such gestures, and if you happen to like playing mobile games like say, “Pokemon Go”, then boy does Niantic Labs have a surprise for you.

Special Valentine event

Shortly after their latest alert that two new critters have been added to the game world of capture, US-based Niantic, which developed the “Pokémon Go” app for Nintendo, announced on Tuesday the start of a special in-game event that runs through Valentine’s Day on the 14th up until February 18th for good measure. Intending to “Share the Love” in this romantic of days – and the days before and after – the developers announced that during that time period loyal players of “Pokémon Go” will received double the amount of “candy” in-game items that they’ll usually get from capturing Pokémon.

The candies, which vary according to the type of Pokémon caught, are used in the app to either improve the stats of these same creatures making them more powerful when battling in gyms or to “evolve” them into newer and stronger forms like in the original videogames and anime. Niantic also announced that for this same Valentine’s Day period, two pink and adorably cute “Generation-1” Pokémon called Clefable and Jigglypuff (fans of the anime will recall this temperamental singing diva) will also appear with greater frequency in the game world, just like ghost-type Pokémon ruling the roost during Halloween.

Valentine Pokémon hunters

Believe it or not, this news has managed to generate a great deal of positive reactions on social media, so much in fact as seems to offset the prevailing thought from the latter part of 2016 that the rocket which was “Pokémon Go” has long burned out of any significant interest from gamers, even with the follow-up new “Pokémon Duel” game.

Some cheeky Twitter posters have proclaimed that they’ll spend the days of that special event not on a Valentine’s date with someone, but once again prowling the streets to hunt the spotlight pink Pokémon and stock up on candies.