Pokémon Pokopia (2026)

[bestgaragedoors]

A few days ago, the first life sim Pokemon game was announced: Pokemon Pokopia. You play as a Ditto that has taken the form of a human trainer and developing an area to attract new Pokemon to live there. You will be able to talk to and interact with Pokemon, learn new skills, and craft items.

The game definitely seems inspired by Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but I'm really interested in the skills that you can learn and the extent of how you can customize your biome. They're definitely trying to have a "cozy game" with this one. There's not much information about it available yet, only the Nintendo Direct, but hopefully we will get more soon.

Anyway, what are your thoughts? What are you excited - or worried - about?

 

[K_S]

It looks cute, but as I'm not an animal crossing fan (way too much like playing dolls/house/ marrying a farming sim) I really would rather not.

Now it might peak my interest if mon who were in PC got dropped into pokepedia and how they are treated in this utopia impacts their battle prowess in mainstream games via iv/ev stat manipulation... (and the farming sim gets nice drops for "daycaring" a "guests" mon. That might be an interesting way to wrangle the friendship mechanic and allow casual and competitive players to play together... but I don't see the game (and series) going that way to interweave the two games/ideas into a cohesive whole.

 

[Negrek]

This one really intrigues me! I don't really know much about the "life sim" genre, since Animal Crossing is the only game I've played in that vein, so I'll be curious to see how similar they actually end up being. It's kind of surprising we haven't seen a game of this nature before, since I think "chilling in the pokémon world with my pokémon friends" is an appealing fantasy for a lot of people.

I don't think I have any particular worries, although sometimes Things Get Weird when games decide to incorporate talking pokémon. I think there's a ton of potential for cozy pokémon spinoffs like this, so I'll be watching it with interest.

If this was available on Switch I'd be checking it out for sure, but since I'm not sure when/if I'm getting a Switch 2 at this point, I may end up skipping this one. It's not enough to sell me on a console... It's up to Gen X to do that, I'm afraid. :P