Tails by the Foxfire

The Cliff Notes: A Fresh Take on the Pokémon Adventure Concept

In Pokopia, you take on the role of a Ditto who wakes up in an unknown wasteland with only a Tangrowth for company. You take the form of your trainer (fully customizable), discover a Pokédex, and begin your Pokémon adventure just as your trainer did all those years ago. It’s the classic Pokémon experience for veterans, but also serves as an accessible entry point for beginners. Instead of capturing Pokémon, however, you’re befriending them by building and caring for their habitats, which may make it more appealing to gamers like me who feel bad making Pokémon fight. Instead, you’re working with Pokémon and using their abilities to restore the world around you by working together.

The Pokémon World You Know and Love, With Fun For Minecraft Fans & Newbies

Pokopia’s art style immediately establishes itself as a Minecraft style sandbox builder, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about it. My first (and only) brief experience with Minecraft was like 5 minutes on a friend’s server about 10 years ago. They explained absolutely nothing, dropped me in the middle of a volcano, and… yeah, I had no idea what to do. Still, Pokopia looked absolutely adorable, so despite my brief and confusing experience with Minecraft, I figured I’d give it a go. And man, I’m glad I did, because Pokopia has been exactly what I needed to decompress from work while also going through some health stuff on the side. 90% of my time is spent stressed, exhausted, or sleeping, and Pokopia slotted neatly in as a game I could play with relatively little thought required.

Controls feel intuitive, and I found abilities (like making grass sprout, breaking rocks, watering plants, etc.) are drip-fed into your repertoire at a digestible pace without overwhelming you. Inventory size and PP (how many times you can use your abilities) start small and can be grown by purchasing ‘Packing Tips’ and ‘PP Up’ from the Pokémon Centre PC, so your capability scales with you.

Pokopia Scratches the Animal Crossing Itch and Then Some

The world of Pokopia feels new and familiar at the same time, with plenty of references for old fans that won’t alienate new ones. Break blocks as you please to climb mountains, build paths, clear routes… the world is your Shellder, and so large that you’ll feel like a kid again. Players are encouraged to explore with Traces of a Pokémon (habitat hints) and materials spread out around the map, and it feels pretty impossible to ‘mess up’ because blocks can be easily broken, picked up, and placed back down without anything feeling irreversible. As well, though houses can take a day to build (a point of contention some busier players have with the game), they’re also easy to relocate with the Relocation Kit you can buy from the PC. Essentially, Pokopia is exactly what it says on the tin: a big box of Pokémon-themed building blocks that gets added to over time with a gradually more robust furniture and ingredient selection available as you raise the comfort level of each area. I’ve loved following the story so far, and the fact that pursuing it through the different area gates unlocks more habitats, recipes, character customization options, and building materials over time has kept it from hitting the same wall of stagnation I ran into with the singular island in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Speaking of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, have you ever wished you could just fill your island with villagers to hang out with and chat to? Pokopia’s got you! As you continue building habitats and finding Pokémon, your environments will populate, allowing you to watch your new buddies interact with the decor and each other. They’ll greet you as you pass by, help you out by offering you materials as gifts, occasionally make requests, and even ask you to play minigames with them. Then there’s the dialogue: it’s silly, it’s charming, it’s entirely characterful and has made me smile and laugh more times than I can count. There are breathtaking moments, too: unexpected encounters that add a feeling of adventure and majesty that feel wholly unique to the Pokémon world. The whole thing feels a lot more alive to me than Animal Crossing’s limited villager capacity, limited borders, and comparative emptiness, and I say that as a huge Animal Crossing fan.

Pokopia’s Story Adds Emotional Layers to the Building Experience

At the time of writing, I’m about a week into playing Pokopia consistently, but I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of its story and all there is to see. I’ve maxed out the comfort level in the Withered Wasteland biome and now I’m working on restoring Bleak Beach. The latter was a real shock, especially following how much my Pokémon friends and I had brightened up the Wasteland area. Fresh from the sprawling green hills and fields of flowers I’d cultivated, I was faced with a ruined city covered in debris and dirt, as if a tsunami or tornado had hit it. Compared to the wasteland, Bleak Beach felt a whole lot more like delivering disaster relief, starting with clearing the roads and clearing out pollution. That was about the point Pokopia revealed its emotional depth to me. The wasteland had hinted at something terrible having happened, but the city drove it home: there were no people, no Pokémon (at least at first): just remnants of the lives that used to be. More unsettling than the silence, though, was the realization that I knew this place from my childhood. (I won’t spoil the surprise, but there’s a good chance you know it, too).

All that to say, Pokopia deconstructed any illusions that the Pokémon world exists in a vacuum. Just like our own, it’s vulnerable to natural disasters and ruin, as we’ve seen hinted at in the early games’ references to the Pokémon war, the need for Lavender Town’s Pokémon Tower, the burned tower in Ecruteak City, and the brutal side of the story as seen in the Pokémon manga. The grass is green on the other side, no doubt, but maybe not that much greener than we thought. By baking in that parallel to our world, what Pokopia also teaches us is that no matter how bleak our prospects seem, we have the power to come together and rebuild. Things might not ever be exactly the same as they used to be, but with enough effort, they can be just as good–if not even better–than before. I talked about this some in my Stardew Valley Festival of Seasons blog, and here it is again: that all-important message that creation matters, whatever form it takes; that every idea and every effort pulls its weight to help make the overarching whole possible, as you’ll see demonstrated throughout each of Pokopia’s Important Requests. It’s a theme that’s heartened me and only made me love Pokopia more, and that has inspired me to try harder and get more creative and resourceful in order to give my Pokémon buddies the comfortable homes they deserve.

Pokopia’s Hoppip, Skiploom, and Jumpluff Event Shows Promise For Ongoing Updates

On top of the base game’s growing library of building materials, recipes, and customization options, Pokopia has also introduced limited time events that offer exclusive decorations, habitat types, and Pokémon. For March 10th to March 25th, trainers can catch Hoppip, Skiploom, and Jumpluff by visiting Dream Islands with Drifloon and collecting Cotton Spores strewn around the area. These are then traded for special items that can be used to create habitats for Skiploom and Jumpluff (you befriend Hoppip by talking to them in Withered Wasteland). Though this is the first event of its kind, I hope it’s the first of many events to come that will keep Pokopia fresh and fun for a good length of time to come.