Bear with me here: Pokémon has always had an environmentalist subtext. As you wander its verdant, creature-filled worlds, collecting species like an acquisitive David Attenborough, you are constantly shown that people and Pokémon should live in harmony. The bad guys in these stories, from Team Rocket to Bill Nighy in the Detective Pikachu film, are always the ones who want to abuse these creatures for personal gain. Otherwise you are shown that people must have respect for Pokémon; both the critters you catch and the ones that exist in the wild. There is a delicate independency between humans and the natural world.
In this new spin-off from the series, we see what happens when there are no humans around. You, a shapeshifting blob of jelly called Ditto, awaken in a half-demolished wasteland that was once, presumably, a lively town. There are some other Pokémon around, confused and lonely, and together you work to restore the place and make it beautiful again. Taking the uncanny humanoid form of your half-remembered former trainer, you learn useful talents from the Pokémon around you: how to water parched grass, dig up weeds and grow flowers, punch rocks until they crumble to clear all the old paths.
The work is soothing and methodical: similar to Minecraft, Pokopia’s world is made up of blocks that you can destroy and rearrange, shaping the landscape according to your wishes. Restore their habitats and new Pokémon will show up, bringing fresh talents with them. Some prefer grass shaded by a boulder; others a picnic table set with a tempting plate of fruit; others, a cart stacked with boxes. The pace is unhurried, but there’s always something to do. It’s an interesting marriage of sedate Animal Crossing-esque decorating and socialising, and town-building busywork.
I found it so charming how the Pokémon talk to each other. (Usually, as humans, we can’t understand what they’re saying.) Different personalities come through: Charizard is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a huge bro; Vespiquen is well mannered and a touch regal; Pidgey is honestly just happy to be there; Tangrowth, a friendly, professorial tangle of vines, guides you through your daily tasks. Improving their homes and habitats makes each creature happier, until you have a delightful collective living together in an appealing, well-decorated grove. When you unearth a human artefact – a bike, perhaps, or a map – they all get together to guess, ineptly, at what it might have been used for.
I was reminded of plenty of other games while playing Pokopia. Besides the obvious Minecraft, Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing influences – and Dragon Quest Builders, with which it shares a developer in Omega Force – I also thought of Viva Piñata, an underrated 2006 title in which you also create tempting habitats to lure creatures to your garden. But I didn’t often think of the other Pokémon games. Pokopia is nothing like them, and honestly that is a great strength. It benefits from the cuteness, charm and nostalgic associations of Pokémon, but suffers from none of the over-familiarity.
Pokopia turns out to be huge, and unexpectedly complex. As new zones opened up beyond that first wasteland, I realised that this game was probably going to occupy me for as long as I wanted. (With 300 Pokémon to catalogue, the conclusion of the story need not be the conclusion of the game.) This is not a child-friendly Poké-painted simplification of the life-simulation genre, but instead an accomplished celebration of it, borrowing the best of all its many influences.