How to Evolve Inkay into Malamar

If you don’t know the trick to evolve Inkay in Pokemon GO and other games where this squid Pokemon appears, you may be confused as to why it won’t reach its final form even with enough experience or candy. While many Pokemon evolve in straightforward ways, the games have gotten a bit creative with some creatures and made their evolution a bit of an open secret or clever trick.

How to Evolve Inkay in Pokemon GO

If you recently caught an Inkay in Pokemon GO, you might be wondering how to evolve it into Malamar. Inkay is a special evolution, meaning that you’ll need to know the trick to make it evolve.

Like other Pokemon that require buddy activities or special tasks to reach the next stage, Inkay won’t evolve until you meet the additional requirements. When you click on Inkay’s information, it will show that it requires 50 Inkay Candy to evolve, plus a question mark. That question mark means there’s more to evolving Inkay than just candy.

Even if you’ve got the right number of Inkay Candy, the evolution will still be a light pink color indicating you can’t yet evolve the Pokemon. If you try to click it, you’ll get a message saying that Inkay has a special evolution that requires some help to evolve, but the game isn’t super clear on what that means.

The secret to evolving Inkay into Malamar in Pokemon Go is turning your phone upside down. Once you’ve collected 50 Inkay Candies, simply hold your phone upside down. Once you do, the evolution button will become clickable, and Inkay will evolve into Malamar.

How to Evolve Inkay in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet

In mainline games like Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, you won’t need to collect candy to evolve Inkay, but you will still need to flip it upside down.

To evolve Inkay in Pokemon Scarlet & Violet, you’ll first need to train it or give it EXP candy until it reaches Level 30. As your Inkay levels up, you will need to flip your Nintendo Switch console upside down. This will trigger its evolution to Malamar.

To get this trick to work, you’ll need to make sure that your Nintendo Switch is not docked and does not have any external controllers attached to it. Both Joy-Cons need to be attached to the system when you flip the Nintendo Switch upside down. As long as you meet these conditions, your Inkay should evolve to Malamar when it levels up to Level 30 or above.

The method is similar in other mainline Pokemon games that feature Inkay, such as Pokemon Sworld & Shield. Generally speaking if you’re trying to evolve an Inkay, you’ll need to flip your console or gaming device upside down to do it.

Why Does Inkay Evolve Upside Down?

The upside-down aspect of Inkay’s evolution has been a part of its story from the beginning. Much like Psyduck, Inkay’s psychic powers are impacted by what’s going on in its head. In this case, Inkay likes to float upside-down to improve blood flow to its head, which also boosts its psychic powers.

In the lore of the Pokemon world, this boost in psychic energy from floating upside down is what causes Inkay to evolve into Malamar. So, the Pokemon Company incorporates this background into the game by having players flip their console or phone upside down before they can evolve the squid Pokemon.