35 Pokes was created when NotGerald wanted to host a Pokémon tournament with his real life friends, however none of his friends knew much about Pokémon, so he felt the fairest way to have them play was to randomly generate Pokémon for them to play with. With inspiration from Winsect Cup, another metagame with level 35 bug types, he created 35 Pokes. Unfortunately none of his friends liked the idea of playing Pokémon, so NotGerald decided to just make it into a discord. Most of the original players came from Winsect Cup, followed up by a post on R/Stunfisk during August 2023, which caused their first big boom in players.