Pokémon: Pokopia is the latest Pokémon game, and is a pretty significant departure from “normal” Pokémon games, in that it isn’t about catching, training, fighting, dungeoneering, rescuing, or any other typical Pokéactivities. It’s solely about making a Cool House that Squirtle wants to live in, and making them as happy as possible.

I have not actually played this game. I have instead only been allowed to watch it being played because we’ve only got the one Switch 2, and Wife has been playing it almost non-stop since release. And when she isn’t playing it Kiddo is all over it. Maybe I’ll get to play it later this year, but honestly, I think I’ve seen enough.

Based on the trailers, Pokopia seemed like a pretty straight forward premise: It’s Pokémon + Animal Crossing + Minecraft. Ship it, instantly sell a billion copies. Having now watched how it’s actually played, and realizing it’s developed by the team that made Dragon Quest Builders, no, it’s something else.

It seems like a chill cozy game where you wander around and hi-five all your favorite Pokémon and have a big Pokémon party or whatever, but it’s actually a deeply deeply complicated puzzle game. Pokémon each have their own terrain or object configurations that define their Habitat, and certain habitats are easier to build in certain zones. But then you have to house all these little guys, and they all have specific living preferences, likes and dislikes. But you’ve got to pack them all as densely as possible so you’re not maintaining 151 houses, so every new Pokémon you find is another complication to a world-spanning categorization puzzle-game.

The game also doesn’t do an amazing job explaining this at the outset, so it is absolutely possible to go hog wild with finding and designing Habitats, and then whoops you’ve got 30 Unhoused Pokémon getting progressively more sad by the minute while you’re trying to solve the NP-complete housing problem one day at a time because your building projects take a full actual human day to be constructed after they get through the Pokémon Zoning Commission. It was bad enough that Wife ragequit, nuked her save started over after the first day or two of playing, because her first zone was such a mess that it was deemed Unsalvageable.

The interactions in the game are fantastic. All the Pokémon have their own goofy little personalities and quirks and conversations amongst themselves. It’s not full-on Tomodachi Life, but it’s still pretty complex. At one point early on, Wife found some sad Pokémon who wanted a toy. She didn’t have any on hand, so she went and tried to sneak around and swipe some blocks from another Pokémon who didn’t seem to be paying attention. As she was walking away to deliver them, it noticed and cried out something to the effect of “OH NO MY BLOCKS!” Quickly trying to recover the situation, blocks were placed down, a new toy was found, but due to the somewhat clumsy controls, instead of placing them she ripped up the fence that defined a “house”, leading to a whole group of Pokémon to become thoroughly distressed as they became unhoused, spilling out into the cold post-apocalyptic Pokémon streets.

It’s wonderful, top to bottom, I’m just not allowed to play it. Highly Recommended.