Burnout and the Power of Pokemon Pokopia
Back in March, I was supposed to write a review of Pokemon Pokopia. I started one – I actually got about halfway through! – and it was honestly glowing. It spoke about how this was the game the series had needed for years, and that in the midst of all going on in the world, it was to 2026 what Animal Crossing was to many in 2020. But instead of being able to finish that review, I instead spent the month of March – and several months since – dealing with the worst burnout I’ve ever experienced. It was partly triggered by an intense time for me at work, but was also following what was – to get a little personal here – two of the hardest years of my life. For much of those two years, I’ve been able to push through – you will have seen reviews, previews, features, and event coverage from me as I held on tightly to my ability to contribute in some way to an industry and community I’ve been passionate about my whole life. But earlier this year, passion stopped being enough to stop my brain from resetting in the way it has clearly deeply needed for a very long time. The words stopped coming, and the drive was gone. I had nothing left to give.
And yet – I was still playing Pokopia.
Beyond the hours I was spending doing my paid job (because capitalism doesn’t rest), and the time spent feeling guilty about the balls I was increasingly dropping left right and centre, all I was thinking about was Pokopia. Even though my enthusiasm for games had been suffering for months, here was this cozy, warm hug of a game that asked so little of me, but at the same time, presented me with so many possibilities. To draw a particularly dramatic parallel, the dystopic wasteland of Pokopia’s worlds felt much like several parts of my own life – ruins containing remnants of what they’d been before, and suggestions as to what they could be again.
From the start, Pokopia tasks you with adapting those ruins, but it doesn’t rush you to fix them. The Pokemon of Pokopia have experienced loss on a grand scale, which you – seemingly the lone ditto – are still experiencing as you take on the Herculean task of effectively rebuilding the world. Slowly, surely, as you complete tasks to make the world more suitable to exist in and to entice new Pokemon to new habitats, the areas around you come alive again. At the start, they won’t be beautiful, or uniform – you literally don’t have the blocks you need to make them so. But as you build up a community around you to help you establish a way forward, you can begin to understand what’s possible with a little help from your new (but powerfully, entirely familiar) friends.
But for me, it wasn’t Pokopia’s willingness to let me take things at my own pace that made it perfect. It was the way in which it allowed me to decide the scale of those tasks, and didn’t always force me to tap into creativity (that I simply did not have) in order to complete them. There are a deluge of games that give the player space to build out their vision for an island, or a community – and it can be fun to have the world as your oyster, the sky the limit! I have friends who have lovingly recreated worlds from other media, or terraformed lands into entirely new biomes. For me, my well of creativity having run dry, possibility felt not freeing, but overwhelming.
What I needed was the perfect blend of direction, patience, and opportunity. A game that could almost think for me, but that supported me when I wanted to deviate from the plan, and allowed me to choose the scale of my own tasks. Sometimes I had bursts of inspiration, and would start crafting fully-themed, free-standing structures, perfectly curated to a Pokemon’s personality in order to provide them with the ideal home. Sometimes, I would see the ruins of a path, and just start filling in gaps of identical bricks until I’d recreated an entire street. I didn’t have to think in order to make that progress – it was almost like doing paint by numbers in an open world, and it was perfect for allowing my brain to rest in what also felt like a productive way.
There are parts of Pokopia’s world that can’t be restored to their previous state – at least not without razing the whole world to the ground and starting anew. The events that have befallen these places have altered things so permanently that what they become must include some adjustments. Realising that was cathartic, too. Sometimes you can’t just follow the template of what’s familiar, you have to adapt – and often, in Pokopia and in life, this new version of things will be better. More efficient, or fruitful, or beautiful, or functional and welcoming to those around you.
Because though this is in many ways a game about loss and destruction, the feelings it inspired in me were almost exclusively ones of optimism and hope. The Pokemon around you don’t need the world to be entirely perfect in order to want to be part of what you’ve created. They’re strangely picky at times, sure, and I wish they’d had fewer meltdowns over the fact I’d moved an object in their habitat one square to the left, but ultimately all they need is their little patch to call home – and they’re just thrilled to be there. They will nitpick and complain, but they’ll also just openly tell you how much they appreciate you – and then they’ll give you (deeply disappointing) gifts to show it. They’re rediscovering who they are, too – designing their spaces and revealing their desires bit by bit. You’re all in it together.
For those who would have preferred a simple, straightforward review of Pokemon Pokopia, either now or back in March – I’m sorry I couldn’t give that to you. I can give you the brief version and simply tell you that it’s the best game on the Switch 2 to date, and is absolutely worth buying the console for, especially knowing that new content is coming. But it felt important to pass on the broader context behind my words, here. Pokopia feels like an allegory for many things – environmentalism, the destructive power of capitalism and the unbridled desire for power, the importance of science – but I didn’t expect it to feel so human. This game about weird little monsters understands humanity and the human condition more than almost anything I’ve ever played.
I’m sorry, human ditto, for the months I spent talking about how offputting you were in the lead-up to Pokopia’s release. You were just trying your best to reconnect to something important to you the only way you could – with a little help from your friends. Turns out, maybe that’s all we can all ever do.
