On Friday night, my boyfriend and I sat on the couch and had a refreshing evening doing nothing together. We tuned in to a baseball game, he grabbed my guitar, and I eagerly fired up Pokémon Pokopia. This is a new cozy life simulator game in the 30-year-old series. This is different from previous Pokemon.
I talked about my experience while playing and explained the process of building habitats to increase the comfort level of my Pokémon friends, which is the main purpose of the game.
“Onyx is trapped in a cave, but he can’t break through the walls, so Squirtle suggests having a party and making it rain to soften the rocks,” I told my boyfriend as we played. “But neither Squirtle nor I know what ‘celebration’ means, so we’ll have to ask Professor Tangrowth what ‘party’ means.”
When I finally made it rain and woke up Kyogre, I was delighted. But then the Charmander, who calls me “best friend,” noticed that the flame in his tail goes out when it rains. So I had to build a small hut for shelter from the rain with the help of my friends Timber and Hitmonchan.
All of a sudden, the baseball game was about to end and I just looked up and saw it was 11:30pm. To my horror, my boyfriend fell asleep on the couch next to me.
I didn’t realize he was asleep. I was so engrossed in creating a habitat for my Pokémon friends that I didn’t notice that he stopped responding to my comments…because he wasn’t awake anymore. As he came and went with light snoozes, I never stopped giving a detailed live feed of how we were restoring the Magikarp’s shoreline habitat. I completely forgot.
I was and still am ashamed that this happened. For my own benefit, I have to believe that I made this mistake not because I’m a careless partner, but because Pokopia is simply too good a game. So it’s not my fault that I paid more attention to the imaginary Onyx trapped in a cave than to the actual person next to me. (You can see how helpless Onyx looked! How long was he trapped there?)
Pokopia is a combination of Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Minecraft, but it’s set in the post-apocalyptic Kanto region of Pokémon. Considering the dark setting, it’s impressive that “Pokopia” still firmly belongs to the category of cozy games.
I’m not the only one who is obsessed with “Pokopia”. The game was so popular and exceeded sales expectations that Amazon increased the price of the physical version of the game by $10 to a whopping $80 (the game is also available as a digital download). It’s also the first Switch 2 exclusive game to generate enough buzz for people to upgrade to the new console.
The last few games in the main Pokemon series, such as “Pokémon Scarlet” and “Pokémon Violet,” were met with a lukewarm response. The game was buggy and the open world layout wasn’t interesting enough to make up for the rushed feel. Even as a lifelong Pokémon fan who dutifully buys every game the series releases, I find the newer games in the series enjoyable, but I lose interest once I complete the main story. However, ‘Pokopia’ far exceeded my expectations with its vastness and thoughtful design.
In addition to the four main regions, Pokopia has Pallet Town, a sandbox version for group play. If I had to guess, I’d say that less than a week after its release (oops!), I’ve played Pokopia for a solid 20 hours, and I’m not even halfway through the main story yet. Even if it doesn’t, it feels gloriously open-ended — but still, it definitely seemed like the developer would release additional regions to explore as part of a DLC pack, a price I’d happily pay even though the game’s price was already a hefty $70.
Few games can put you into a flow state like this. I can’t help but compare it to the feelings I had when Animal Crossing: New Horizons first released, but this time, thankfully, we haven’t experienced the beginnings of a pandemic lockdown that will change our lives indefinitely.
A lot of things have improved in the world since Animal Crossing came out — hey, coronavirus vaccines! — yet many things feel the same. Donald Trump is president again. The federal government disciplines armed agents against civilians rallying for civil rights. Abnormal weather is becoming the norm. I still feel sick.
Like “Animal Crossing,” playing “Pokopia” is an escape and distraction, but unlike an island vacation with Tom Nook, it’s rooted in our real world.
In the post-apocalyptic Kanto region of Pokopia, you play as Ditto, a transformed former trainer who has mysteriously gone missing. In fact, all the humans have disappeared, and the white-haired vine Pokemon hasn’t seen another living thing in years, when he randomly appears in the cave with Professor Tangrowth.
It’s not immediately clear what turned Kanto into a barren wasteland, but as Ditto explores the ruins and restores habitat to find new Pokémon, he comes across scraps of diaries, newspaper articles, and letters that help him piece together what happened. There was some sort of catastrophic climate change that wiped out all of humanity. Pikachu appears in the game as “Peakychu”, a pale creature that has lost its ability to generate electricity, and Snorlax has been sleeping alone in a cave for a long time, making it part of the moss-covered landscape. oh yeah.
Apocalyptic mysteries feel more exciting, if not foreshadowing a new sliver of information.
“We all know that many of our favorite music streaming services around the world are being shut down due to soaring server fees,” said a note from an old man at Pokemart. “While music lovers are still mourning the loss of streaming services, it’s not bad news in the music world.”
The memo goes on to describe a return to the CDs used by “our great-grandparents,” which can be listened to over and over without a subscription fee.
It’s funny to see Nintendo poking fun at the broken model of music streaming, but the part about server costs feels a little too realistic at this point. Fast-growing AI tools require so much computing power to operate that nearly 3,000 energy-intensive data centers are under construction in the United States, adding to the 4,000 already in operation. Demand for more computing power is so high that the tech industry is facing a RAM shortage so severe that the price of a new MacBook Pro has increased by up to $400.
Climate crisis? What is the server cost? A broken music streaming model? It seems as if Nintendo is trying to say something about the state of the world.
But while “Animal Crossing” is pure escapism, “Pokopia” at least gives us a sense of actually repairing a broken world. Seeing Vermilion City in ruins is unsettling, but it’s even more rewarding as you work with other Pokémon to rediscover electricity, illuminate the landscape, and obscure dark clouds with a ray of light.
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