Since I first got my hands on Pokemon Blue back in I think junior high school, I’ve been a huge fan of Pokemon. I did the trading card game in my teens, and I’ve played as many of the games as I could (the latest major one being Pokemon Violet, but I did start the minor game Legends: Z-A).

The only thing I don’t really like about Pokemon is the stress of battles. While some people adore studying their Pokemon’s abilities and potential (which has gotten way more complicated over time) and others might love just barely scraping a victory out of a battle, I’m a lazy and anxious gamer who spends my time leveling up my Pokemon until they’re super overpowered, then plowing through the games. I want an anxiety-free gaming experience as much as possible.

And so it should be no surprise that I love Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’ve been building my own island on my little Nintendo Switch Lite for a couple of years now, and it’s my go-to game for when I especially need to relax. While I love Zelda games, despite the stress they bring, I feel like ACNH was made for me.

And then came Pokopia.

I saw trailers for it and was pretty interested in what looked like a Pokemon/ACNH/Minecraft mashup game, but it wasn’t a massive priority game for me since I’m just not a Minecraft fan and it looked strikingly similar.

But then I tried it.

I don’t know what it is about this game, but I love exploring in it, I love building things, the satisfcation of clearing messes and cleaning things up, and taking care of Pokemon (especially the ones I actually like).

There were many times when I started up Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with a goal in mind, only to get entirely distracted until I forgot what my goal was. Pokopia is about 100 times worse than that, where you find yourself running around doing a bunch of things and forget each one about halfway through. But whereas that should probably stress me out, running all over trying to remember what I was even doing in the first place, the game’s relaxing music, peaceful Pokemon, and overall calming vibes makes it feel more like I’m going out for a stroll with no particular goal in mind.

The game’s controls are incredibly easy to pick up, and there are explanations available at every step, though there were a few things I needed to look up to figure out (like how to track down a Pokemon wandering around on your island).

I think there might be seasonal events, and I am desperately hoping for a DLC despite normally hating DLCs, but I kind of feel like neither Pokemon nor Nintendo expected this little game to be the massive hit it’s apparently been, so there might not actually be much extra content to look forward to. I hope I’m wrong, though.