The Ones Who Walk Away From Pokopia

King of Posters
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My niece is visiting soon and she’s a full blown Pokémaniac, so I needed to get a new Pokémon game to entertain her with while she’s here. Good excuse to try Pokopia, which is getting surprisingly rapturous reviews.

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I’ve played the beginning of it and it’s pretty clear that if you like “cozy” slow life games (not my usual genre), this has the juice. It’s by the people that made the Dragon Quest Builders games, and it pretty much feels like a spiritual sequel to those (but without the combat). So, basically, it’s a third person POV Minecraft-like, but more goal-oriented, with a single player campaign. There’s also a lot of Animal Crossing DNA in here, with the Pokémon you find basically acting as your villagers.

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There are some very clever ways of incorporating the Pokémon theme into this genre. You can create “habitats,” little tableaus of tiles that attract specific Pokémon (or a random mon that likes that kind of habitat). So like, if you place four tall grass tiles together you could get all kinds of guys, but if you place a punching bag next to a bench, you get Hitmonchan. As you explore, you can find hints showing you how to create other types of habitat… or you can discover them on your own as you terraform.

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The Pokémon you collect give you dull little requests that’ll level up your relationship with them. There are Animal Crossing style achievements for like watering a bunch of plants. There’s a lot of busywork like that but it’s pleasant enough. It’s a constant churn of easy little goals that gradually add up to bigger things. The thing is, there are always so many different discrete little tasks available to you at the same time that the game sort of becomes an extremely effective ADHD simulator. You’re constantly forgetting what you were doing because a Squirtle started yelling at you that he wanted a water basin next to his house.

As you explore, you come across little text logs. You see, you’re in an apocalyptic version of Kanto, and all the humans have vanished. The text logs are surprisingly well written, and they give you charming and evocative hints about what happened.

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There’s a cute, gentle sense of humor here. I’m not sure what to liken it to… Maybe the Pokémon anime, though I haven’t seen it in quite some time. I love the weird slimy ditto girl protagonist, that was an inspired choice.

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If you like this kind of game, I’d definitely recommend this one. If I were 7 years old, this game would be my life right now.

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You see, you’re in an apocalyptic version of Kanto, and all the humans have vanished. The text logs are surprisingly well written, and they give you charming and evocative hints about what happened.

This would somehow be much less anxiety inducing if you had written more than two casual sentences about it.

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Lol, the premise is definitely dark but the game’s tone is anything but. Most of the text logs I’ve found so far have been peoples’ chipper blog posts, or excerpts from lifestyle magazines.

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But I care about what actually happened. And so the tone being chipper makes it worse. And yes I know it’s fiction, but people apply this pattern of storytelling to recollection or reporting in reality too.

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im obsessed with both the post-human Pokémon world and the fact that you play as a Ditto taking human form, rebuilding the world as a gooey shapeshifter in a playful simulacrum of human behavior. regardless of the actual game (which i do wanna play sometime) it fucking rules that there is now a Pokémon game with that premise. like, that’s a wishcasting “wouldn’t that be cool” selectbutton post i would’ve made a decade ago lol

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I didn’t realise this was a Switch 2 exclusive but might be the only cosy builder I have any interest in. Feels like the reviews could open up the floodgates to more outsourcing of the brand to more experienced 3D devs.

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i joked with @Ymer that this is probably gonna be a kemono friends situation and that sure looks like it is

minus the hostile aliens i assume

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I’ll play this next year since it’s no new games 2026 for me still but hahaha they got rid of the people finally I’m with sleepy this is what pokemon has needed

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I have to say this is the first Pokemon product I’ve ever been even mildly interested in my life but that’s basically on the strength of DQ Builders being awesome

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I’m really liking this so far, my big complaint is that my partner can’t play the dang game on the switch 1 so we’re fighting over it

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Oh, so it really is Dragon Quest Builders 3. I hope this director makes this story conceit a prerequisite for every DQ Builder-like he makes.

I haven’t followed Pokopia at all and know nothing about it other than this thread, but people saying it’s just a new DQB has shot it up to “I should buy this”.

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One interesting thing this game does that the DQ Builders games didn’t is put things on a real-time clock. Like Animal Crossing, the in-game time matches your local time. They seem like they’re going to play with that a lot too.

I had a couple pokemon team up to build a house, and the game told me the house would be ready at 9:12PM (about 15 minutes later). I thought it was a nice touch that they told me the exact time, so I could go make tea or whatever and look at my real world clock to know when the task is complete.

I also planted some seeds, and it told me they’d be done growing tomorrow. There’s also a daily stamp sheet, and if you stamp every day of the week, then you get a special reward on Friday. I noticed that some Pokemon only come out at certain times of day, too.

So yeah, some full on Animal Crossing style systems grafted on here. I don’t mind it. I’ll be curious to see how far they go with it.

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Man, I thought I wasn’t interested in this game at all but now I’m really interested in this game.

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Yeah, I was wavering between getting this one or getting the Switch Pokemon Snap, but the fact that the DQ Builders people were behind this was what made the difference for me.

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It kills me that DQB2 is probably my favorite game on the PS4, but I have no desire to own another Nintendo system. I guess I’ll just have to wait for SQEX to come back on their hands and knees and beg them to make Final Fantasy Builders.

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Final Fantasy Builders: Re-build the world after Kefka destroys it.

Parasite Eve Builders: After humanity has turned to goo, re-populate New York with all sorts of bio-monster friends.

Chrono Builders: Time travel back and forth to explore the long term apocalyptic consequences of your builds, and then go back and fix things in the present.

Einhander Builders: Build and re-build your city after constant attacks by spaceborne foes.

Or maybe Tecmo can just make their own multi-platform game. Dynasty Warriors Builders (this is just Romance of the Three Kingdoms 16).

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now that I’ve played it a good bit of this I think the writing takes its scenario pretty seriously and there’s a nice sense of melancholy hanging over everything. the charm/levity comes from interacting with the pokemon who are largely blissfully unaware of what’s going on

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