![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
saxbrightwellI was not very successful in avoiding distractions in August either. Cozy games are my weak spot and my partner is a terrible enabler. They actually purchased Pokemon Pokopia months ago, at the same time as the Switch 2, and I resisted it for a long time because I knew once I gave in it would take over my whole brain until I sucked it dry. But summer is always a weird time for me; the altered rhythms of my kids' schedules lowers my resistance to obsessive behaviour, which I can sometimes turn into writing but often gets hijacked into a game instead. At this point I have to concede this summer has been one of the latter.
Pokopia is currently about 10% as successful as Stardew Valley, which I'd say is about right. There are lavish 3D graphics and a sprawling item list, and of course literal hundreds of cute beasts being cute at you. But there is also a late-capitalist cynicism in the visible Skinner box mechanics of recipe unlocks, restriction of multiplayer to a subscription, paid DLCs, and total absence of couch co-op. I'm still *playing* it, but there is a note of wistfulness for how much better the game could so obviously be if it was designed with less of a focus on profit.
It's very different from other Pokemon games, because there's no battling at all, because there are no humans. You play as a Ditto who insists on maintaining a human(ish) primary form, running around restoring a post-apocalyptic wasteland for the benefit of your fellow Pokemon. Without even having played Minecraft myself, just watching my kids play it, I can tell the block-based sandbox world is meant to give strong Minecraft vibes. Because I'm *not* big into Minecraft, I'm most often reminded of Core Keeper instead, but in a contrasting sort of way. The CK world is often profoundly lonely, the ruins populated only by mobs that want to kill you. Pokopia is the opposite. In a very short time on any given map, you have a bustling village full of residents, all of whom are happy to see you.
This is my first time playing a sandbox game with so many opportunities for *restoration.* The ruins still have shapes, and you can gather the resources to rebuild them if you want. At first I was simply looting everything that wasn't nailed down, and often destroying the remnants of buildings to build entirely new ones from scratch, but now in many cases I regret that and find myself going back and replacing much of what I took.
The opportunities for decoration are, frankly, overwhelming. With the first DLC you are the housing authority for >360 Pokemon, and even buddying them up 3-4 to a house that's a lot of houses. For most of them it's all I can do to pull together several furniture items with attributes I know will please the residents; they definitely don't please my eye, but with the doors shut that doesn't matter so much. Arranging things in a way that actually looks good is a much slower project than simply having enough furnishings for a house to count as a house. I've started with Ditto's home base on each map, and am very slowly working out from there.
Because it's my game of all time, I keep thinking of how this will colour my approach to Stardew Valley when I inevitably go back to it. I think I will put more effort into decorating beyond my farmhouse - perhaps looking for bland filler spots in the outside world that could have something more interesting in them, and sprucing up the houses of certain NPCs.
At some point I'm going to have to consciously detach from all these diversions and get back to writing, but I also know myself, and that process will be much easier once the affair has run its course.
Pokopia is currently about 10% as successful as Stardew Valley, which I'd say is about right. There are lavish 3D graphics and a sprawling item list, and of course literal hundreds of cute beasts being cute at you. But there is also a late-capitalist cynicism in the visible Skinner box mechanics of recipe unlocks, restriction of multiplayer to a subscription, paid DLCs, and total absence of couch co-op. I'm still *playing* it, but there is a note of wistfulness for how much better the game could so obviously be if it was designed with less of a focus on profit.
It's very different from other Pokemon games, because there's no battling at all, because there are no humans. You play as a Ditto who insists on maintaining a human(ish) primary form, running around restoring a post-apocalyptic wasteland for the benefit of your fellow Pokemon. Without even having played Minecraft myself, just watching my kids play it, I can tell the block-based sandbox world is meant to give strong Minecraft vibes. Because I'm *not* big into Minecraft, I'm most often reminded of Core Keeper instead, but in a contrasting sort of way. The CK world is often profoundly lonely, the ruins populated only by mobs that want to kill you. Pokopia is the opposite. In a very short time on any given map, you have a bustling village full of residents, all of whom are happy to see you.
This is my first time playing a sandbox game with so many opportunities for *restoration.* The ruins still have shapes, and you can gather the resources to rebuild them if you want. At first I was simply looting everything that wasn't nailed down, and often destroying the remnants of buildings to build entirely new ones from scratch, but now in many cases I regret that and find myself going back and replacing much of what I took.
The opportunities for decoration are, frankly, overwhelming. With the first DLC you are the housing authority for >360 Pokemon, and even buddying them up 3-4 to a house that's a lot of houses. For most of them it's all I can do to pull together several furniture items with attributes I know will please the residents; they definitely don't please my eye, but with the doors shut that doesn't matter so much. Arranging things in a way that actually looks good is a much slower project than simply having enough furnishings for a house to count as a house. I've started with Ditto's home base on each map, and am very slowly working out from there.
Because it's my game of all time, I keep thinking of how this will colour my approach to Stardew Valley when I inevitably go back to it. I think I will put more effort into decorating beyond my farmhouse - perhaps looking for bland filler spots in the outside world that could have something more interesting in them, and sprucing up the houses of certain NPCs.
At some point I'm going to have to consciously detach from all these diversions and get back to writing, but I also know myself, and that process will be much easier once the affair has run its course.
