Review
"Pokémon Pokopia" is a dangerously good time eater
by Domagoj Belancic
Pokémon Pokopia: 15 tips and tricks to get you started
6/3/2026
Translation: Katherine Martin
Pictures: Domagoj Belancic
Pokémon Pokopia is a cosy life sim with surprisingly wide-ranging gameplay mechanics. This is my guide to getting the perfect start to the game.
Pokémon Pokopia represents an interesting mix of genres. A bit of life sim here, a pinch of crafting there and a dash of exploration. The result? One of the best Pokémon games in years.
To help you cope with its array of gameplay mechanics, I’ve put together 15 essential beginner’s tips designed to make your entry into Pokémon life easier.
Be patient and follow the story
Very early on in the game, Pokémon Pokopia allows you to create an online island so you can play with other people. Resist the temptation to do this and concentrate on the single-player story first.
Rebuild the variety of city ruins and help the cute Pokémon. It’s the only way to gain access to handy items, more AP for your attacks, a significantly larger inventory and important skills.
Heads up: I’m about to share some information about attacks and Pokémon you’ll encounter later in the game. If you’d rather not hear about these yet, skip to the next tip.
Play until at least the fourth city, Sparkling Skylands. That’s where you’ll learn Glide from Dragonite. Simply follow the story, then create a habitat that’ll attract Dragonite so it can appear and teach you the attack. The habitat, by the way, involves a canoe in the water at a high-up location with two duckweeds. Don’t worry, though, the game will tell you what to do.
But don’t let Rollout (Rocky Ridges, Graveler), Surf (Bleak Beach, Lapras) and Waterfall (Rocky Ridges, Gyarados) pass you by either. You don’t necessarily need to learn these attacks before moving onto the next location, but it’s worth unlocking them as soon as possible. They can be used to destroy multiple blocks at once (Rollout), cross bodies of water (Surf) and even swim up waterfalls (Waterfall).
You’ll find Gyarados at a hidden location in Sparkling Skylands (see screenshot below). If you talk to it and complete a mission, you’ll learn the attack. Graveler and Lapras aren’t shown on the map from the start. First, you need to attract them by building their habitats. To attract Graveler, you’ll need four pieces of moss next to a mossy boulder (you’ll find those in the damp caves of the Rocky Ridges). Lapras, on the other hand, wants seawater, a palm tree and any four bushes (all things you can find in abundance at Bleak Beach).
If you want to unlock everything, you’ll need to play through the entire story. You’ll be rewarded with a skill that’ll turn the whole game on its head and give you enormous freedom when building.
Pokémon comfort made easy
To increase a city’s environment level, you need to keep your Pokémon comfortable. The game doesn’t tell you which specific steps to follow to increase the level efficiently. Even so, it’s actually quite straightforward to do.
- Start off by going to the PC in your chosen area. Press the minus button to view their current comfort level. Scroll down to find the Pokémon that are feeling particularly uncomfortable. The main thing to do to increase your environment level is make sad Pokémon at the bottom of the list happier (and not the already happy creatures even happier).
- Grant any wishes these Pokémon have. It doesn’t usually take much to make them happy. A berry, a toy or a bed could be enough to boost their comfort. Once that Pokémon rises up the comfort ranks, you can move on to the next misery guts on the list.
- Build houses to make Pokémon happy. If you invite a Pokémon to live in a house, it’ll be incredibly happy. Another plus point of house-building is that it frees up that Pokémon’s natural habitat for a newcomer – often the next evolution of the first occupant.
- Make an effort to build new habitats to attract Pokémon. The more Pokémon you have, the more you can make happy. This’ll help you increase your level faster.
Don’t use kits to build houses
There’s no need to buy expensive building kits or wait hours for your houses to be finished. The game defines a building as four walls and a door. These walls only need to be one block high, and it’s fine to go for the cheapest wooden variety of door. If you take this approach, you’ll create new houses for your Pokémon in seconds.
Alternatively, you can restore one of the ruins in the game environment. Most of the time, it just takes a few building blocks, a couple of windows and a door for those houses to go back to their old condition.
Build yourself a house as soon as you arrive in a new area
Once you get to a new game area, you should set up your own base as quickly as possible and plant your flag on it. It’s the only way to Fast Travel between areas. As soon as you plonk down a Ditto flag on a property, it belongs to you.
Again, your home base doesn’t need to be a «real» house, built using a kit. Four crummy walls you’ve built yourself, a door and the Ditto flag will do the job. There are more advantages to building an outdoor base like this, namely that you’ll land right on the map during Fast Travel instead of indoors. As a result, you can skip the extra loading sequence that appears when you leave a building. You can simply jump straight into the action without having to wait.
Take your Pokémon with you to new regions instead of hunting for new ones
Your building projects require both resources and Pokémon you can force into toiling away on the construction site. Certain talents are needed for certain tasks. If you find yourself in a new area without any suitable Pokémon for the job, you don’t need to bust your butt to build new habitats in the hope that the right monster appears.
Instead, travel back to a previous area and recruit the right helpers there. Simply tell them to follow you (up to five at a time). They’ll even stay by your side during Fast Travel. Once you get to the new area, you can lure them to the construction site and use them there.
Just bear in mind that some Pokémon won’t follow you to a new area if there are important quests you haven’t completed.
Be like a vacuum cleaner
Collect everything you see, whether it’s rubbish, building blocks or resources. Some items and building projects get really expensive, especially later on in the game. So, make like a vacuum cleaner, and use Ditto’s special attack (long press on the Y button) to devour everything you find.
Yes, it can be annoying if your inventory’s always full. But you know what’s even more annoying? When you’re five sea glass shards short of finishing an important item, but you’ve no idea where to find them.
Travel to Dream Islands every day
In the first game area, you unlock the balloon Pokémon Drifloon (habitat: three campfires next to each other). It’s a funny little creature that’ll take you to a Dream Island on request. All you have to do is interact with one of the many doll Pokémon you find throughout the game.
Each doll takes you to a different Dream Island, where there are various resources you can mine. If you’re missing an item for a big project, it’s worth travelling there with Drifloon and going on a major collecting offensive. Just remember you can only visit one Dream Island per day. So think carefully about what resources you need at a given moment.
Organise your resources smartly
Don’t be messy like me. When I first started the game, I threw all my resources into random boxes. Not a smart move. I’d recommend setting out to stay organised right from the start. For instance, you could build a box specifically for storing blocks, a box for special items, a box for seeds… the list goes on.
Place your boxes of raw materials right next to workbenches. That way, you won’t have to move the resources you need from your box to your inventory. You can just start crafting right away.
Cut out down time when processing raw materials
Over the course of the game, you’ll learn how to process raw materials such as clay or iron into bricks or iron ingots. To do this, you need ovens and the help of fire Pokémon to heat them up. Processing often takes several hours,
so build a little production facility in every city. Fill the ovens with resources on each visit, collecting the finished product the next time you’re there. That way, you avoid waiting time and let the game work away in the background. It pays not to have any idle time during the production process, especially if you’re keen to do a lot of building.
By the way, the tutorial lies to you. You don’t have to manually guide fire Pokémon to the oven to get them to do their job. Being well-behaved, dutiful monsters, they head there of their own accord while you’re away.
Cook like your life depends on it
Set up a cooking station (a bread oven, a stove with a pan and saucepan and a chopping board) in every city. As the game progresses, you’ll learn how to whip up delicious dishes that’ll help strengthen your attacks. If you eat a hamburger (made with beans in a pan), you’ll suddenly be able to use Rock Smash to break down boulders previously too solid to destroy.
Once you’ve collected resources such as beans, wheat or tomatoes, you should cook them. There’s nothing more frustrating than standing in front of a boulder, unable to break it. Always take enough food with you to keep you big and strong.
Side note: if you cook with specific Pokémon, you’ll create special dishes you can use to create new habitats.
Explore your surroundings – it’s worth it.
Pokémon Pokopia isn’t just an excellent cosy life sim – it’s also a really good adventure game. There are so many cool details and secrets to discover. Long-time Pokémon fans are bound to shed a tear at all the nostalgic references. With this in mind, take some time to explore your surroundings amongst all that building and talking.
If you explore thoroughly, you’ll come across numerous mysterious stone slates. The spoiler box contains information on what to do with them:
Change the camera settings
I don’t like the default camera settings. The camera’s far too close to the action, too slow and temperamental. Having played the game for about 50 hours, here’s what I’d recommend:
- Camera speed: 5
- Camera distance: far
- Auto adjust: on
- Auto follow: off
Wondering about the last two options? Turning on auto adjust allows the camera to avoid obstacles. It’s advisable to activate it; if you don’t, you won’t be able to see inside block constructions (the camera stays outside buildings instead of going inside with you). I keep auto follow switched off because I hate it when the camera automatically aligns itself with the direction my character’s moving in. Especially in a game like Pokémon Pokopia, where you look around a lot.
Change the button assignments
With default settings enabled, you run with B and jump with R. The thing is, you can’t move the camera with the right stick at the same time as holding down B. You can reverse this button assignment via the Run/Jump Controls option. Once you do, you can jump with B and run with R.
If this customisation doesn’t do the trick, you can reassign every single button yourself in the menu at the bottom.
Customise the order your attacks appear in
You usually select attacks in Pokémon Pokopia via the drop-down menu in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. The more attacks you learn, the more tedious switching between attacks and scrolling down the list becomes. Fortunately, if you don’t like the order your attacks are listed in, you can adjust it. Mind you, the setting’s well hidden.
Press L to open the ring menu, use the left analogue stick to select an attack, then press X. This takes you to a menu where you can swap the attack you’ve selected with another one. This is handy if you often find yourself switching back and forth between two attacks that aren’t listed right next to each other.
Playing with a mouse is better for building
Pokémon Pokopia supports mouse control via the Joy-Con 2 controllers. However, the game doesn’t make this obvious – it’s only indicated by an option in the settings. If you ask me, this makes zero sense, because the mouse mode is a game changer.
Playing with a mouse allows you to build much more precisely, positioning objects correctly with pixel precision. This also means you make fewer mistakes when removing objects. Another handy thing about this? You have a much greater range, meaning you can work on items that are far away too.
Mouse controls also give you much more flexibility when using Rock Smash. You can choose precisely which blocks you want to destroy, without doing any collateral damage. You can even smash faraway blocks without moving, which is especially handy on all those annoying floating blocks left over once you’ve cleared a large area.
You can read my detailed review of the game here:
Header image: Nintendo / The Pokémon Company
Domagoj Belancic
Senior Editor
Domagoj.Belancic@digitecgalaxus.chMy love of video games was unleashed at the tender age of five by the original Gameboy. Over the years, it's grown in leaps and bounds.
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