Pokémon Pokopia is taking a page from Minecraft in how it handles shared worlds between players. Rather than taking the Animal Crossing approach where each island has a “host” player that must be present for you to access it, Pokopia is giving players persistent worlds that no one person has to be online for you to reach. That way, multiple players can cultivate one of its reinvigorated Pokémon towns without having to drag one person into the play session, though it will have some restrictions.
In an interview with Famitsu (translated by GamesRadar+), Pokopia chief director Takuto Edagawa explained that the life sim will use a feature Koei Tecmo calls “cloud island,” which allows multiple players to access an island regardless of whether the island’s owner is present. However, only four players will be able to enter the island at the same time. So even though no one person has to be in the game at that moment, you can’t have dozens of players building all at once.
“There is a different system that is unique to this game called the ‘cloud island,’” Edagawa said. “This is an island that everyone can create together, and even if the host (the island’s owner) is not online, everyone is free to join and play. If you can’t find the time to meet up and play together, you can still work together to build the island little by little in your free time.”
So if you’ve got more than three friends who want to contribute to the island, they’ve gotta wait in line, which is a shame. I have a group of friends I’d love to make an island with, but it sounds like the game’s limitations will make that a more arduous process than in something like Minecraft.
While the presence of persistent islands is good news, the bad news is that we have more details on the ghost-like Peakychu, the white Pikachu who is one of the new forms with terrifying post-apocalyptic implications that will show up in Pokopia. Speaking with Famitsu (once again translated by GamesRadar+), Edagawa said that Peakychu was dubbed “unfortunate Pikachu” by the team after they saw its design, which was created by Pokémon developer Game Freak, so if you were worried that Koei Tecmo was creating some kind of unsanctioned version of Pokémon’s mascot, it sounds like Peakychu, the moss-covered Snorlax called Mosslax, and other alternate forms in Pokopia are coming straight from the source. Edagawa says that Peakychu has a“temporal and melancholy feel,” which sure sounds like she’s a ghost of some kind. Is she dead? Is she dying? We’ll find out when Pokopia comes out on Switch 2 on March 5.
