932: Nacli

On first brush, Nacli may seem like little more than just a hunk of rock. It's actually a hunk of rock salt! Tremendous difference, we know.

It has the appearance of a mushroom-like chunk of stone, with salt crystals growing out of it, aggressively cuboid because that's how salt crystals are known to form. And with this, it comes with the ability "Purifying Salt", which gives it an immunity to status effects, thanks to salt's "curing" properties. Salt is used to cure meat of microbes and bacteria that could be harmful to ingest, by depriving them of the moisture they need to grow and multiply. It's just convenient that salt also adds flavor to meat as well.

This line also comes with a fun naming scheme. If you remember a bit of high-school level chemistry, you might recognize "NaCl" as the periodic table formula for "sodium chloride", aka salt (duh). Fortunate that "Nackle" makes for a funny way to pronounce that, so they worked it into the Pokemon's name!

It's hip to be square!

933: Naclstack

Less fortunately, the straight-up rock monsters in Pokemon seem deathly allergic of STAYING rock monsters, with Naclstack becoming notably more animal-like in appearance with recognizable legs. Unlike Carkol though, this design is a lot nicer and even doubles down on the whole cuboid bit, to a point where it's regularly compared to Minecraft mobs. It's even got strange, "pixilated" eyes!

More notable is that the Pokedex describes it as a predator, where it's said to spray salt pellets as projectile weapons into prey in order to dry up all the moisture out of them. It slowly salt cures its prey by dehydrating them to death, jesus christ. Horrifying way to go aside, it's really neat how thought out that is as the concept for a predator made of salt.

Remember to take a break before you get tilted.

934: Garganacl

And like Geodude and Rolycoly before it, Garganacl becomes a notably more bipedal creature that's a far cry from the strange rock weirdo they started out as. That said, it's easily the best out of these types of 'mons because at least it tripled down on being as cuboid as possible while doing it. Maybe it's just because Roggenrola and Rolycoly have already felt a bit like their evolutions betrayed all the cool stuff their prevos had going on, thus we're just used to it by now. But Garganacl just feels like it stands plenty on its own.

It helps that, again, it's still playing into Nacli's shtick of just being a block of rock salt. But it thankfully doesn't shy away from having strange anatomy. With bulky salt "armor" that forms around its head to pose as its "shoulders", but are evidently just part of its entire actual arm. And it even gets awkwardly long arms and legs to boot, a funny juxtaposition with its tiny torso and head.

Speaking of those shoulders, there also seems to be some inspirations from Meso-American pyramids in the design. It feels like they're taking the Spanish region as an opportunity to include Pokemon whose designs are nods to some Latin American inspirations. (Squawkabilly would be native to Pokemon's equivalent of South America, the Fuecoco's line vague Day-of-the-Dead inspirations, etc) Just portions of the American supercontinent that Spain has famously colonized. And there's still more Pokemon that are like this to come.

The Minecraft mob inspirations also MAY at least a little bit intentional, at least to us. Garganacl in particular feels like it largely takes inspirations from Iron Golems, with them having mostly shared proportions and how both are posed as helpful creatures. They even slightly have the same eye shape. It's admittedly a bit of a stretch but it does feel like something could be there.

This line, out of all the three-stage mineral monsters that keep popping up, is probably our favorite. If nothing else, simply because it STAYS fun throughout rather than just get progressively more boring.