Minecraft And Animal Crossing? Pokémon Pokopia Seems Extremely Promising For Families

An hour with Nintendo's cozy Pokémon game shows a loop that might work for younger kids, older kids—and their parents.

I’ve told a version of this story a few times, but prior to my children, Minecraft was a game that I respected but could not find a way into. When I was a kid, if you gave me a pile of Lego pieces, I would stare blankly. If you asked me to build something specific, however, or follow a set of instructions, I’d be off to the races and happy.

You don’t have specific goals in Minecraft other than survival, which left me feeling cold. But when I played with my kids, they would assign me tasks. I got really into it.

Could Nintendo’s Pokémon Pokopia, perhaps best described as walking a a line between Animal Crossing and Minecraft, be another game that works like that for us?

I had an opportunity to play about an hour of Pokémon Pokopia at a recent Nintendo event in New York, where my approach was far less about trying to figure out whether “I” am going to enjoy the games Nintendo was showing insomuch as whether “we”—my family, my kids—were going to enjoy the games. And while I have been very wrong about this before, or found that most games don’t stick, I did come away from my time with Pokémon Pokopia excited about my family (potentially) getting into this.

The basic setup for Pokémon Pokopia is this: you’re a Ditto (the purple blob that can imperfectly and often very creepily transform into other creatures) masquerading as a human. Ditto’s task—your task—is to build a hospitable world that will attract pokémon and humans alike. It’s a lot of building, exploration, designing, and busywork.

Collect this, collect that. Build this, build that. Attract a new pokémon, who will ask you for a favor. Can you build them a place to sleep? Doing that favor means you can do another. It will not shock me if reviews for Pokémon Pokopia end up dinging it for said busywork, but one person’s busywork is another one’s “cozy.” It’s also impossible to tell how such tasks will ultimately feel, whether they ride the line between soothing and repetitive, until you’re able to play it for a number of hours stacked up over time.

I tend to look at games like this as busywork (derogatory), but my kids look at games like this as busywork (complimentary), because games about organizing and task completions scratch an itch in their brains that doesn’t exist in mine. Our tastes are polar opposites! But I do get real joy out of helping my kids out, and it’s not hard to look at Pokémon Pokopia as a game that might work differently for both my children, and open up forms of overlapping play that gives them (and us) opportunities together.

Here’s what I mean.

When my nine-year-old and five-year-old play together, there is hierarchy. My oldest drives the role-playing, creating rules and structure, while my youngest plays her part. This is true across Roblox, Minecraft—any game where the player is tasked with helping define the why of the play space. Pokémon Pokopia seems to allow for both?

There is a lot that you can do in Pokémon Pokopia that is largely “unstructured play,” wherein you can reshape the world—building things, customizing things, etc.—without care of consequence. But you also gain more access to tools for that by participating in the game’s “structured play,” which during the hour that I spent with the game largely involved watering patches of dirt, collecting sticks, and solving cute little puzzles about what might attract a new pokémon to come hang out with me.

It’s easy, then, to see a scenario where my nine-year-old, who can read and is used to being in the driver’s seat during play, instructing my five-year-old on what to do next, while I help them both out. Go grab these sticks, see if you can help this pokémon, etc.

Will it stick in the way Minecraft and Roblox have? I’m not sure.

In Minecraft, you can build anything. In Roblox, you can leave one experience for another on a whim. In Pokémon Pokopia, you’re in Pokémon. That’ll be more than enough for a lot of people and kids, but it won’t be until Pokémon Pokopia is actually out in a couple of weeks to know whether it passes the “play more than one day” test.

Pokémon Pokopia ($69.99) arrives exclusively for Switch 2 on March 5.

Have a story idea? Want to share a tip? Got a funny parenting story? Drop Patrick an email.

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Also:

• It remains frustrating that a lack of voice acting remains a roadblock for Nintendo games. It’ll prove an obstacle for independent play with younger kids.

• Sorry for harping on this, but that lack of voice acting was an issue with the recent (and pretty good!) Bluey game and Bluey’s new Minecraft crossover event.

• I wonder if we should give Stardew Valley a try? Been mulling that recently.