How to Evolve Inkay in Pokemon Go

Pokemon Go’s “Psychic Spectacular” event introduces Inkay, a dark/psychic squid Pokemon. Unlike most Pokemon, Inkay’s evolution into Malamar is a little more involved than simply gathering 50 of its candies by catching duplicate Inkays. The unique quirk of Inkay’s evolution is that you literally have to turn your phone upside down in order to make its evolution button clickable.

This strange evolution method is actually an homage to the 3DS Pokemon games, which similarly required you to turn your handheld console upside down in order to evolve an Inkay.

On top of reorienting your phone for a moment, evolving an Inkay into a Malamar also requires 50 Inkay candies. Since Inkay is brand new to Pokemon Go as of this event, players will need to farm the candies from scratch or convert existing rare candies into Inkay candy.

Fortunately, though, Inkay’s spawn rate is heavily boosted for the “Psychic Spectacular” event, which runs from Wednesday, September 8th, at 10am until Monday, September 13th, at 8pm, with both times corresponding to your local time zone.

Since the event runs for nearly a week, using rare candies is probably unnecessary unless you’re really in a hurry to evolve your upside-down squid. Of course, using Pinap Berries—especially Silver Pinap Berries—will also expedite candy gathering, with each Pinap Berry raising your Inkay candy yield from the standard 3 candies to 6 candies and Silver Pinap Berries giving you a full 7 Inkay candy.

So, how do I evolve Inkay in Pokemon GO?

• Catch Inkays until you have 50 Inkay candy
• Turn your phone upside down
• Press “evolve” to evolve Inkay into Malamar

That’s all there is to it! Malamar has at least niche uses in certain Great and Ultra formats within the Go Battle League, so evolving an Inkay should be well worth your time.