I’ve put over 25 hours into Pokémon Pokopia and am nearing what I believe will be the cozy life sim’s credits, and while I’m obviously not at the “Kotaku Review” stage just yet, I have been really enjoying my time with the game in a way I typically don’t with games like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley. There’s an underlying mystery here that nudges me forward, and even though it can slip my mind as I plant crops, build houses, and hang out with a bunch of Pokémon, I sometimes stumble upon something related to it that brings it all rushing back and knocks the wind out of me.
One of the areas you can terraform in Pokopia is called the Bleak Beach. Developer Omega Force hasn’t created pixel-perfect recreations of old Pokémon environments in this game. They’re more like abstract recreations, suggesting a place that has been torn down by the elements over many, many years. But there are landmarks that make it clear that Vermillion City, the area where many ships docked and departed, once stood here. The broken-down port, an erected tower that was only beginning to be built in the original Red and Blue games, and a neon sign that implies local gym leader Lt. Surge’s Raichu was something of a local celebrity, tell the story of a city that is long gone.
All of that didn’t quite get me. I was restoring the land, building homes, and making friends like I had in the other environments I’d been to by that point. But then I looked off the pier and saw a large ship floating idly off the shore. It couldn’t be…could it?
I hadn’t met Lapras yet and thus hadn’t been taught how to swim, so I pulled whatever tiles I could out of my inventory and made an absolute eyesore of a makeshift bridge that extended over the ocean and to the ship’s dilapidated starboard side. Even in Pokopia’s simple, blocky art style, it was clear this was, at one point, a luxury ship for the Pokémon world’s wealthiest. Inside are the dusty remains of a ballroom covered in balloons, pricey light fixtures, and the bougiest handrails I’d seen in the game up to this point. In a magazine lying on the floor, my fears were confirmed: This was the S.S. Anne.
The ship is the stage for one of Pokémon Red and Blue’s most memorable sidestories, forcing the player to battle against the Kanto region’s elite, fighting their way to captain’s quarters to obtain a Hidden Machine to cut down trees throughout the game. It’s also key to one of the series’ longest-running urban legends in which players theorized they could find a rare, uncatchable Mew by sequence breaking the quest line, and it’s part of one of the original anime series’ most-memorable episodes as hero Ash and friends are nearly killed in a shipwreck while aboard. It’s an iconic location in a franchise with hundreds of those across its 30 years. My eyes welled up with tears.
Pokopia is full of moments of realization like this. The journals and magazine clippings you find around this dying world paint a picture of a world that was in crisis in ways that the Pokémon themselves didn’t understand. Humans wrote down their hopes, dreams and fears, and the Pokémon had no idea of the danger that loomed over them. Nevertheless, they keep rebuilding the world in hopes that humanity will return to live alongside them once more. As I inch toward the final reveal, I’m crossing my fingers that hope isn’t unfounded, but every time I pass by a landmark I remembered walking past decades ago on my Game Boy, I feel my stomach drop once more. Man, Pokopia knows how to twist the knife in between all the adorable Pokémon interactions.
