Our Shy, Conflict-Avoidant Daughter Has Fallen Madly in Love With Pokémon Pokopia

It can be hard to find the right fit for your kid, whether it's a video game, TV show, or movie. But when it does click, it's magic.

One of the biggest responsibilities for a parent these days is deciding which pop culture phenomena to introduce to your child. Based on reports from others, we blacklisted Peppa Pig and tried to introduce Bluey. But our kid would only watch from the doorway, and it left such a negative impression that she refused to go near the secondhand Bluey-themed balance bike we found in a charity shop.

We are still trying to figure out which Disney movie has the least potential to traumatise her.

Honestly, our two-year-old is so sensitive that she won’t watch much media she can’t control, so video games remain her screen time priority, and after many months of Animal Crossing: New Horizons, we decided to try something new: Pokémon Pokopia.

Her dad and I both grew up playing these games, and she’d seen some of the merch we still had around the house, so this Animal Crossing-style take on the franchise seemed like an easy win, especially for a kid who favours creatures over humans and picks up sticks every time she steps outside.

Initially, she watched us play. Predictably enough, Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle were a big hit, and while at first she retreated to the doorway when a new Pokémon was about to burst forth from a habitat we’d created, she soon started to get excited. It helps that so many Pokémon are based on animals she already loves: birds, bugs, cats and dogs. I’d told myself I’d only play when she was around—for my own productivity more than anything—but that changed when I realised I could only meet Hoothoot at night. I made good use of the capture button, recording 30-second clips of important events to show her the next day.

Before long, she wanted to try for herself. She had so much fun using Water Gun to refresh the barren land that dad suggested we add PowerWash Simulator to the list. With a bit of practice, she learned how to headbutt trees for fruit and to pull at the shoots that appear in the ground. For a while there, her favourite game was “carrot or leaf?”

I was so impressed with her determination to learn how to navigate menus, using her rudimentary reading skills to achieve her goals: crafting a new storage box when the old one was full (the bane of every Pokopia player’s life), travelling to a Dream Island purely to listen to the little tune that plays in the loading screen, and, most importantly, asking her favourite Pokémon to follow her around.’

The chortling delight with which she’d watch Bulbasaur lolloping towards her made me think about how grateful we were for Pokémon Yellow with its little pixellated Pikachu companion; months later, she still frequently tells us that various fictional characters are invisibly “following” her as she goes about her day.

I’ve no real point of comparison for how well she can now use a controller, analogue sticks and shoulder buttons and all; I was recently excited to hear that a friend’s toddler was “playing Astro Bot”, only to find that they were actually just watching their dad.

She’s also a sponge for the language of the game. She has no real understanding of the plot, which is probably for the best (we’re not quite ready to introduce the concept of the climate apocalypse just yet), but she’ll ask if our garden is “hydrated tall grass,” on walks she points out clusters of wildflowers and calls them “habitats,” and her pretend play now features such phrases as “uplifting duckweed” and “large lost relic” (and occasionally, hilariously, “save and quit”).

Her enthusiasm is even helping me learn the names of Pokémon beyond the first few generations.

I’m sure she’s learning more useful lessons, too. She now knows that bricks are made of baked clay and that music used to come on CDs, and she’s practising problem solving: if Charmander doesn’t want to be out in the rain, build them a den; if there’s mud everywhere, help Piplup to clean it up (and, in real life, when you need to wash your hands be like Piplup and make lots of soapy bubbles!).

For a shy kid like ours, a widespread interest like Pokémon is a useful ice breaker. She can discuss it with the librarian when we print out Squirtle colouring pages, talk to the hairdresser about their favourite Mimikyu, and feel more at home when she takes an imaginary Charmander to a friend’s house only to find they have an actual stuffed toy to cuddle.

With her first experience of Pokémon so focused on nurturing the land and its individual inhabitants, I do wonder how our extremely conflict-averse daughter will find the combative collectathon nature of the main games. Fortunately, there’s plenty left to do in Pokopia for now, and whenever that eventually loses its shine we already know that the next stop for our budding wildlife photographer will be Pokémon Snap.

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