If Pokémon Pokopia is not in my high 5 video games of 2026 come December, we may have had an astonishing 4 months. At launch, this recreation had me in a chokehold and refused to let me go till I discovered myself weeping at its finale. It is heartwarming and inventive and immensely fashionable, a lot so {that a} sequel feels inevitable. However I do not know that I actually desire a ‘Pokopia 2’.
This can be a thought that sprang to thoughts as I dove into the Bubbly Basin DLC final week. The enlargement is superb, tweaking some small niggles I had with the gameplay (storage would not fully drive me up the wall anymore) and throwing in a completely new biome for me to enter with large desires earlier than inevitably abandoning my aspirations down the road after three hours of laying paths.
The DLC’s upcoming ‘Half 2’ feels far much less bold on the time of writing, with the bonus equipment possibly solely holding my consideration for a day or two, however ‘Half 3’ guarantees to go giant once more with one more new city to discover.
What began as a recreation that I may already play perpetually has someway taken on much more content material, and I could not be happier with it — increasing the bottom recreation by 40% inside a 12 months isn’t any imply feat. The large query is, what comes subsequent?
The reply appears fairly apparent to me: It is a sequel, is not it?
I would prefer to see Ditto go and repair up a unique Pokémon area as a lot as the subsequent fan, however the central theme of regrowth and improvement simply would not hit the identical.
Pokopia has been all over the place since launch, pulling in 5 million gross sales in “simply over 4 months” (making it the second most-popular Change 2 recreation, with roughly a 21% set up base), sitting in fourth place on Metacritic’s best-rated video games of 2026 checklist, and changing into the best-selling Pokémon spin-off of all time. There is not any manner that The Pokémon Firm goes to disregard cash on the desk like that.
Although the DLC has received me excited about whether or not we actually want a ‘Pokopia 2’ within the first place. Think about with me, for a second, what a sequel would even appear like. A recreation nearly equivalent to its predecessor, mechanically, however with some new biomes and Pokémon thrown in for good measure, proper? Does not that sound… quite a bit just like the DLC?
And what would ‘the identical once more’ do to Pokopia’s story? I do not wish to get slowed down within the ‘lore’ of a comfortable crafting recreation, however Pokopia’s narrative felt so very self-contained, and intricately tied to the gameplay, that it’d really feel improper to do it yet again. I would prefer to see Ditto go and repair up a unique Pokémon area as a lot as the subsequent fan, however the central theme of regrowth and improvement simply would not hit the identical.
There are positively components of Pokopia that I would nonetheless prefer to see improved — a greater map sits proper on the high — however these really feel like tweaks somewhat than game-changing additions to hold a sequel off of.
There is a large a part of me that thinks it may be higher for Pokopia in the long term to embrace the Minecraft college of thought: avoiding a straight, iterative sequel and taking place the enlargement route as an alternative. If Omega Pressure can preserve churning out these DLC packages, with new cities, Pokémon and objects besides, then ‘Pokopia 1′ (as we’ll all sooner or later inevitably name it) may final perpetually. Higher that than plonking us proper again firstly in 5 years’ time with one other introduction to Water Gun.
Positive, it won’t be fairly as interesting from a enterprise perspective. Why not cost everybody one other 60 quid each few years for mainly the identical recreation once more? Loads of different collection get away with it. However morally, in my coronary heart of hearts, I can not see what a sequel may deliver to the desk that would not be simply as simply carried out in one other enlargement.
After all, I am no recreation developer, and there is each likelihood that the geniuses over at Omega Pressure are already cooking up an thought for the sequel that is much more imaginative than my pessimistic little mind can muster. It managed it with Dragon Quest Builders 2, in any case. If the guts continues to be there with out feeling like a money-grabbing retread, I will little question be there on day one to lap it up.
Heck, the Pokéfan in me is so sturdy that even when it’s the identical recreation once more with a ‘2’ slapped on the top and that includes Bidoof this time, I would possible nonetheless be there to sing its praises. Wait, am I the issue right here..?
