Pokémon Pokopia
A withered Kanto, no humans in sight, and a Ditto walking around in a human shape: that is the starting position. Instead of raising a battle team, the player lays out terrain, plants crops and assembles habitats until Pokémon wander in and settle. The franchise's creatures act as neighbors and workers here, and the Pokédex fills as the town does.
Top 3 Reasons to Play
- The loop has no game-over state and no time pressure, and large builds can sit unfinished while other tasks keep moving.
- Ditto learns moves from befriended Pokémon and applies them to the terrain: Leafage brings up grass, Water Gun waters dried plants, and a Lapras form handles Surf.
- Building is grid-based in the manner of Dragon Quest Builders and Minecraft, and Omega Force, the studio behind Dragon Quest Builders 2, co-developed the game.
Story and Lore
Ditto wakes in the Withered Wasteland after a long sleep and takes a human form modeled on a memory of its Trainer. No people remain. The only resident at the start is Professor Tangrowth, who gives out the first requests and explains how the place works. Ditto's aim is set early: get the Pokémon back onto Kanto's land, and hope the trainers follow.
What happened to humanity is told indirectly. Scattered Human Records, personal journals and system logs describe a run of environmental disasters that made Kanto unlivable and an evacuation into space; a preservation system kept the Pokémon in storage until habitats stable enough for them were found. Most Pokémon speak from routine and memory, so the fuller picture sits in the records.
The setting reuses familiar Kanto locations in altered form:
- Withered Wasteland, the starting zone, occupies the former Fuchsia City area.
- Bleak Beach is the old Vermilion City, kept under permanent cloud, which makes lighting a key task.
- Rocky Ridges stands where Pewter City was, dusted with volcanic ash and home to the Pewter Museum of Science.
- Sparkling Skylands consists of floating islands made from pieces of Saffron City.
Palette Town, a set of three empty islands, has no storyline of its own.
Gameplay and Mechanics
The core loop is habitat building. Each species wants a particular setup, from a few blocks of tall grass to an arrangement of several crafted items, and once the requirements are met the Pokémon appears after a short wait. The Pokédex and a separate Habitat Dex log both sides of the process.
- Recruited Pokémon take over farming and shopkeeping, and a Specialty such as Build, Bulldoze, Crush or Illuminate decides which jobs each one can take. Some tasks call for a particular kind of Pokémon, like a Fire type for lighting fires or an Electric type for charging devices, which makes parts of building a logic puzzle.
- Each main area has major requests that open the next one, many of them involving Pokémon variants unique to that area.
- Feeding Pokémon, giving them items that match their personalities and furnishing their houses all raise their comfort, and the sum pushes an area's Environment Level up.
Visiting lets a friend enter a town through a link code, though in the story areas guests are limited to a spectator role with only a few Ditto transformations. Cloud Islands are separate named islands, generated at random or from a seed, shared through a nine-character code. Palette Town is the one space that supports GameShare, which lets a player without the game join in.
After the credits the game widens, with more Pokémon, habitats and furniture to find and a basic music-making tool to try.
Characters and Factions
Ditto is the only playable character, a shapeshifter that appears in male and female versions. Professor Tangrowth, the guide introduced at the start of the story, also holds the Appraise Specialty used on relics.
Rather than factions, the cast is organized around what each Pokémon does for the town, and a handful of residents anchor the areas. Bleak Beach holds two of the best known: Peakychu, a pale Pikachu with the Illuminate Specialty, brightens the settlement, and Mosslax, a moss-covered Snorlax asleep in a cave, serves as the area's progress marker.
- The resident artist is Smearguru, a Smeargle, who offers the Paint Specialty and furniture customization.
- In Rocky Ridges, Chef Dente the Greedent teaches the cooking recipes whose dishes strengthen Ditto's moves, while DJ Rotom, a Rotom in speaker form, runs the music system and swaps the town soundtrack when given a CD.
- Tinkmaster, a Tinkaton engineer atop a tower in Sparkling Skylands, leads the largest construction projects and turns Iron Ingots into Tinkagears.
Legendary and Mythical Pokémon take part in the story as well, among them Kyogre, Raikou, Volcanion and Mewtwo.
Editions
The base game ships in a single standard edition, with no Deluxe or collector's tier. The Expansion Pass is a separate paid DLC that requires the base game. It is split into three parts, bought together as one pass; individual parts cannot be purchased on their own.
- Part 1 adds the underwater town of Bubbly Basin, home to new arrivals such as Popplio and Lumineon.
- Part 2 centers on accessories for dressing up Pokémon and adds no new town.
- Part 3 brings the second new town, along with more Pokémon and furniture.