What is Pokopia? Inside the calming Pokémon game that ditches battles for gardening

We explore the cosy world-building spin-off with Game Freak’s Shigeru Ohmori and his fellow developers – and learn how it began with a Pokémon-hunting dream Pokémon is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and everybody knows what to expect from these games by now. The concept is simple: head into a cartoonish paradise full of whimsical creatures, capture them in red-and-white balls and assemble a team of warriors from them, before battling other aspiring Pokémon masters. But the latest entry in the series is different – a game that’s more about building than battling. In Pokopia, a refreshingly pacific twist on the series, players are dropped into a virtual world where Pokémon are freed from their spherical prisons and happily roam their natural habitats. There’s one minor caveat – you have to create those habitats by hand, building them from what you can find. Continue reading...

By Tom Regan