Vdex Project

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


The VirtualDex Project (or, as it's commonly referred to, VDex) is a Pokémon fansite headed by Shirogane. It revolves around catching, breeding, and raising Pokémon (aka clicking thousands of times for no good reason). It can be found here.

Tropes used in Vdex Project include:
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Subverted. You already begin with a large discount while you're still new, but you will pay the full price of items once you've gain 5,000 Pokédollars or more, which disables the newbie discount. Besides inflation via player-run stores and auctions, however, the items you buy are the same price as they were in the games and stay so among all stores. In addition, pokeballs may be bought at a discounted price until after you purchase 30 or more pokeballs, in which case they'll resume their original price.
    • Played straight if you have Bel as your partner, who will cause stores to increase their prices so long as he's there.
    • Averted with the Secondhand Shop, as regular items bought from there are cheaper in price compared to pokemarts (for example, the pokeball can be bought for 180 pokedollars secondhand whereas it is sold for 200 base-price at pokemarts), but only if another member sold that item straight from their bag.
  • Anti-Grinding: Pokémon stop gaining experience points on their own when they reach level 75, but can continue gaining experience through training or battling.
    • Subverted as an update now allows the lead pokemon in your party to continue gaining experience until they reach level 100.
    • Advertisement points also become this, as you obtain 1 point per unique viewer, but require more viewers per point once you've accumulated 100 points for that duration.
  • Berserk Button: Elle is NOT a Voltorb. You also don't want to make comments on Regirock's height. Or the pattern on his forehead.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: There are quite a few items that can only be purchased for real money. However, many of the items can be found in player-run shops, and many other items, although would shorten time and in-game expenses if used, are not necessary to unlock features in the game, and are upgrades to pre-existing items that can be bought in-game (such as the master ball, the golden ticket versus the S.S. Ticket, and so on).
    • And some of the donation Pokémon can be obtained from Gacha.
      • Only if other players release them, however.
  • Collection Sidequest: Many of the events, which include the variety of the pokemon featured, and sometimes an additional sidequest for special items or to find extra pokemon in the event. The easter mareeps further have achievements linked to them. Self-imposed challenges include collecting shinies, retros or second-frame Pokémon.
  • Cosmetic Award: The achievements and the custom goals
  • Discount Card: Yun's ability gives the player a discount that grows the closer they are to him.
  • Dropped a Bridget On Him: Both Ada and Lyrit are female and male respectively, but cross-dress often, causing many to mistake them for the opposite gender.
    • One of the NPCs even refers to Ada as "the angry dude-lady."
  • Friend to All Living Things: Jan's ability, which boosts the happiness of caught Pokémon and maxes them out upon capture if Jan's own affection is maxed out and they were caught with a Friend Ball.
  • Gijinka: It's not just a design choice, but a major part of the backstory.
  • Goggles Do Nothing: One event involved purchasing a pair of goggles from an in-game shop. They actually did do something, however--buying them netted you an achievement.
  • Handsome Lech: Zan, who not only goes on and on about women, but offers tips to the player if male or neutral and hits on the player if female.
  • Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Hari and Nao
  • Level Grinding: The player within dungeons, as well as the Pokémon while training.
  • The Napoleon: Regirock
  • Palette Swap: In addition to shinies, which are canon, there are tons of palette swapped sprites that have been made available through events or as monthly donation promotions.
  • Perpetual Beta: The game is stated outright to still be in beta, and over time Shirogane continues to tweak pre-existing features and add entirely new ones while the game remains publicly open.
  • Pink Girl, Blue Boy: Depending on the gender of the player, the color of their Pokécell and some text will change. Females are pink, males are blue, and a neutral player is green.
  • Play Every Day: For as long as you play on the main site, your Pokémon will gain some experience points, eggs will grow closer to hatching, you automatically accumulate a bit of money, and certain partners will increase their relationship with you. If you are inactive, experience and money continue to accumulate for a few hours before stopping until you log on again.
  • Purely Aesthetic Gender: You can change your character's gender at any time, but with the exception of one partner's reaction and how some characters address you (such as sir or madam), there is little difference between having one gender or none at all.
  • Randomly Drops: On rare occasions, a wild Pokémon you catch will come with a berry attached.
  • Relationship Values: The partners, who have varying ways to improve their relationships and whose abilities get better the closer they are to the player. They also give items tradeable for legendary-summoning items when their relationships are maxed.
  • Shout-Out: The donation item, the Book Of Llunec, which makes the Pokémon holding it shiny in more ways than one by giving them the skin of a killer.
  • Socialization Bonus: Some Pokémon need to be traded before they can be evolved (unless you give them eviolite). There are also points given when you feed another player's Pokemon that you can redeem for various useful items (including the aforementioned eviolite), as well as advertisement points you can trade for money accumulated when someone sees your team.
    • Some of the events are based around this, such as 2011's holiday event where you could send presents to other users containing the seasonal item tiny bauble (pokemon, as well as items held by said pokemon, could also be included in these presents alongside the bauble).
    • Other events encourage teamwork from the community, be it goals within events that shall extend or add bonuses to an event if the community completes it (including discovering all the methods of being able to breed halloween litwicks, finding all the messages to unlock the Lonely Rayquaza, then transform them into Radiant-natured shiny rayquazas), or encouraging members to share or loan pokemon otherwise to fit certain criteria (including giving away items like Chocolate Hearts in valentine to obtain Valentine Combees, or to loan Cyanide Mareep to encounter Cyanide Togepi)
  • Team Mom: Allen, to a point his nickname is Mommy.
  • Troll: Z, Uxie, and Trollface Mew.
  • Tsundere: Ada.
  • Unlockable Content: Various options are unlocked when you own more Pokemon and gain badges, including the ability to trade, the ability to grow berries, the ability to encounter certain Pokémon normally not in the wild prior, ability to overcome obstacles on the map, and so on.
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: Lyrit and Ada. Regice on weekends.
  • Yandere: Lyrit
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