In Pokopia, a shapeshifting Ditto pretends to be human to rebuild an empty world
The hero of Pokémon Pokopia is not a trainer at all. It is a Ditto, the blob that copies other creatures, which finds its old trainer's Pokédex in a world abandoned by people and simply decides to become one. From there the job is gardening on a grand scale: coaxing wildlife back into a ruined Kanto.
The idea came from Shigeru Ohmori, who directed Scarlet and Violet. Thinking back to his first series job, designing maps for Ruby and Sapphire, he pictured fans building habitats of their own. Game Freak had no background in sandbox building games, so The Pokémon Company suggested pairing it with Koei Tecmo's Omega Force, the studio behind Dragon Quest Builders 2. Announced in September 2025, the game reached the Switch 2 on 5 March 2026.
Play revolves around crafting and cultivation. Each creature appears only once the right little habitat exists, grass planted under a tree, say, or a punching bag set beside a bench, and some have particular tastes, like Hoothoot's liking for darkness. Befriended Pokémon teach the Ditto moves for watering plants, clearing debris and smashing boulders. Around 300 species from all nine generations turn up, and a day and night cycle follows the real clock.
The backstory is gently melancholy. Diaries left behind reveal that the land grew hostile to life, so humanity retreated into space, leaving its Pokémon stored in an enormous computer built to release them if it began to fail. Along the way you meet oddballs such as Mosslax, a Snorlax that slept so long plants grew over it, and a Pikachu that has lost its spark.
Critics compared it to a blend of Minecraft, Animal Crossing and Viva Piñata. It became the best-reviewed Pokémon game on Metacritic, and four Famitsu reviewers gave it 39 of 40. It sold 2.2 million copies in its first four days, a million of those in Japan, and passed 5 million within about four months, becoming the Switch 2's second-best seller at that point.
Source: Pokémon Pokopia
