\n<\/p>\n
On Friday night, my boyfriend and I sat on the couch for a refreshing evening of doing nothing together. We tuned into a baseball game, he picked up my guitar, and I eagerly booted up \u201cPok\u00e9mon Pokopia<\/a>,\u201d the thirty-year-old franchise\u2019s new cozy, life simulator game, which is unlike anything we\u2019ve seen from Pok\u00e9mon before.<\/p>\n I narrated my experience as I played, explaining the process of constructing habitats to increase the comfort levels of my Pok\u00e9mon friends, a primary objective of the game. <\/p>\n \u201cOnix is stuck in a cave, but I can\u2019t break through the walls, so Squirtle suggested throwing a party to make it rain to soften the rocks,\u201d I told my boyfriend as I played. \u201cBut Squirtle and I don\u2019t know what \u2018celebration\u2019 means, so we have to ask Professor Tangrowth what it means to \u2018party.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n I rejoiced when I finally made it rain and awakened Kyogre<\/a> \u2014 but then Charmander, who calls me \u201cbestie,\u201d discovered that the rain makes the flame on its tail go out, so I had to build a little hut for shelter with the help of our pals Timburr and Hitmonchan.<\/p>\n Suddenly, it was 11:30 PM. I only looked up because the baseball game was about to end. To my horror, my boyfriend had fallen asleep on the couch beside me. <\/p>\n I did not realize he was asleep. I was so engrossed in building habitats for my Pok\u00e9mon pals that I didn\u2019t notice that he had stopped responding to my commentary\u2026 since he was no longer awake. While he drifted in and out of a light couch snooze, I had never stopped relaying a detailed play-by-play of how I was restoring a seaside habitat for Magikarp. I was completely oblivious.<\/p>\n I was, and am, embarrassed that this happened. For my own good, I have no choice but to believe that I committed this faux pas not because I am an inattentive partner, but because \u201cPokopia\u201d is simply too good a game, and thus, it is not my fault that I paid more attention to the fictional Onix stuck in a cave than the actual human being beside me. (You should\u2019ve seen how helpless that Onix looked! How long must he have been stuck in there?)<\/p>\n \u201cPokopia\u201d is like an \u201cAnimal Crossing,\u201d \u201cStardew Valley,\u201d and \u201cMinecraft\u201d hybrid, but set in Pok\u00e9mon\u2019s Kanto region, which has now become an apocalyptic wasteland. Given the bleak setting, it\u2019s impressive that \u201cPokopia\u201d is still firmly in the category of cozy gaming.<\/p>\n I\u2019m not alone in my obsession with \u201cPokopia.\u201d The game seems to be so popular that it surpassed sales expectations, leading Amazon to bump the cost<\/a> of physical game copies by $10, bringing it to a whopping $80 (the game is also available as a digital download). It\u2019s also the first Switch 2<\/a> exclusive game that is generating enough buzz<\/a> to make people go out and upgrade to the new console.<\/p>\n The last few main series Pok\u00e9mon games, like \u201cPok\u00e9mon Scarlet\u201d and \u201cPok\u00e9mon Violet,\u201d<\/a> were met with lukewarm reception \u2014 the games were buggy, and the open world layout wasn\u2019t quite intriguing enough to overcome how rushed they felt. Even as a life-long Pok\u00e9mon fan who will dutifully buy any game the franchise puts out, I\u2019ve found the recent installments to be fun, but they lose my attention once I complete the main storyline. Yet \u201cPokopia\u201d has far exceeded my wildest expectations with how expansive and thoughtfully designed it is.<\/p>\n There are four main regions in \u201cPokopia,\u201d plus a sandbox version of Palette Town for group play. If I had to guess, I\u2019d say I\u2019ve played a solid twenty hours of \u201cPokopia\u201d since it came out less than a week ago (whoops!), and I am less than halfway through the main story. It feels gloriously endless, even if it\u2019s not \u2014 but even then, I could definitely see the developers releasing additional regions to explore as part of a DLC, which I would gladly pay for despite the game\u2019s already high price of $70.<\/p>\n Few games have enraptured me in a flow state like this. It\u2019s hard not to compare the feeling to when \u201cAnimal Crossing: New Horizons\u201d first came out<\/a>, but this time, we thankfully are not experiencing the onset of a pandemic lockdown that would change our lives indefinitely.<\/p>\n A lot in the world has improved since \u201cAnimal Crossing\u201d came out \u2014 yay, coronavirus vaccines! \u2014 and yet, so much feels the same. Donald Trump is president again. The federal government is siccing armed agents on ordinary people rallying for civil rights. Extreme weather is becoming the norm. Things still feel bad.<\/p>\n Like \u201cAnimal Crossing,\u201d playing \u201cPokopia\u201d is an escape and distraction, yet it\u2019s grounded in our actual world in a way that your island getaway with Tom Nook is not. <\/p>\n In the post-apocalyptic Kanto of \u201cPokopia,\u201d you play as a Ditto<\/a> who has transformed to look like its former trainer, who is inexplicably missing \u2014 in fact, all of the humans are gone, and when you randomly appear in a cave with Professor Tangrowth, the greying vine Pok\u00e9mon hasn\u2019t seen another creature in many years.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not immediately clear what happened that made Kanto evolve into a barren wasteland, but as your Ditto explores the ruins and restores habitats to find new Pok\u00e9mon, you encounter scraps of diary entries, newspaper articles, and letters that help you piece together what happened: there was some sort of disastrous climate event, and as a result, all of the humans are gone. Pikachu appears in the game as \u201cPeakychu,\u201d a pale creature who lost its ability to produce electricity, and Snorlax has been solitarily sleeping in a cave long enough that it\u2019s become part of the landscape, covered in moss. Yikes. <\/p>\n The apocalyptic mystery makes each new morsel of information feel more exciting, if not foreboding.<\/p>\n \u201cWe all know that everyone\u2019s beloved music streaming services are being forced to shut down one by one due to the steep rise of server fees all over the world,\u201d one note from an old Pok\u00e9 Mart says. \u201cWhile music lovers are still mourning the loss of these streaming services, it isn\u2019t bad news in the world of music!\u201d <\/p>\n The note continues to explain the return to CDs that \u201cour great-great-grandparents\u201d used, which don\u2019t charge a subscription fee, no matter how many times you listen to them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s funny that Nintendo is poking fun at the broken model of music streaming, but the bit about server costs feels a bit too real for this moment. Since fast-growing AI tools require so much computing power to operate, there are nearly 3,000 energy-intensive data centers<\/a> under construction in the U.S., which will add to the 4,000 already in operation. The demand for more computing power is so high that the tech industry is facing a RAM shortage severe enough to bump the price<\/a> of new MacBook Pros by up to $400.<\/p>\n Climate crisis? Server costs? Broken music streaming models? It almost feels as though Nintendo is trying to say something about the current state of the world. <\/p>\n But while \u201cAnimal Crossing\u201d is pure escapism, \u201cPokopia\u201d at least gives you the sensation of actually rehabilitating a broken world. It\u2019s unsettling to see Vermillion City in ruins \u2014 but that only makes it more rewarding when you work with the other Pok\u00e9mon to rediscover electricity and illuminate the landscape, eclipsing the dark clouds with a burst of light.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n