From Pokéstops to Pikachu: everything you need to know about Pokémon Go

The game has been flooding the news and neighbourhoods but for many it seems as silly as it is impenetrable. Poki(C)mon Go devotee Clem Bastow breaks it down

If you've been out and about over the past few days, chances are you've seen people frantically swiping their smartphones in front of places of interest, or listened with slight alarm as friends chattered excitedly about how they "caught a Sandshrew behind the supermarket". You may have wondered: what the heck is happening?

The answer is Poki(C)mon Go, the new smartphone game from Nintendo and Niantic Labs. According to data tabled by Digital Vision, two days after the app's launch, Poki(C)mon Go was installed on 5.16% of Android devices in the US and had roared to the top of the iTunes app store's free app charts. Nintendo's stocks are reported to have risen to their highest value since 1983 and demand for the game was so high, with servers crashing regularly, that Amazon's chief technology officer, Werner Vogels, even offered to share the traffic load.