Pokopia "doesn't force you to wait" like Animal Crossing – the cozy Pokemon life sim wants you to knock stuff out your "own way" instead of waiting "a whole day to continue to play"

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Pokopia "doesn't force you to wait" like Animal Crossing – the cozy Pokemon life sim wants you to knock stuff out your "own way" instead of waiting "a whole day to continue to play" News By Ashley Bardhan published 11 February 2026

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Sick of waiting on Tom Nook? Tired of shaking the same peach trees over and over just to pass the time 'til morning? You might want to take a vacation from your Animal Crossing island, then, and sail towards Pokemon's new cozy life sim Pokopia – where you don't have to wait.

Director Takuto Edagawa explains in a new VGC interview that, unlike more languid sims like Animal Crossing, which encourage players to wait for its story to unroll in real-time, the upcoming Pokopia embraces your time-is-money attitude.

"For this game, I have been speaking to Mr. Ohmori to discuss how we want fans to enjoy it, and how they can play it in their own way," Edagawa says about senior director at The Pokemon Company Shigeru Ohmori. "As a baseline, casual players can enjoy however they want, maybe little by little, but whoever wants to do a deep dive can continue to play as much as they want. The game doesn't force you to wait, there's no 'wait a whole day to continue to play.'"

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• 90 minutes with Pokemon Pokopia convinced me this could be the biggest cozy game since Animal Crossing
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We felt this sense of endless action in our Pokopia preview, in which GamesRadar+ deputy news editor Catherine Lewis writes, "I've never had an early preview for a game fly by so fast, and could have easily spent the entire day sinking my teeth into the life sim and seeing how deep its systems go."

While Pokopia will encourage some thumb-twiddling with things like building projects, its world seems more energetic next to Animal Crossing's sunglasses by the pool – Catherine notes, "anyone like me who's invested hundreds of hours into Animal Crossing is under real threat of losing themselves in this to the same degree, if not more." Why wait for that feeling?

Take a look at our list of the best Pokemon games while you decide.

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Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. TOPICS Game Freak CATEGORIES Nintendo Switch 2 Platforms Nintendo Ashley BardhanSenior Writer

Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotaku and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.

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