The next Pokémon game is Minecraft meets body horror

Nintendo’s biggest general Nintendo Direct ever has wrapped, and among announcements of new movies, a motorcycle for Samus, and way too many Mega Pokémon was a brand-new Pokémon game that’s equal parts cute and horrifying. It’s called Pokémon Pokopia, and it’s probably the weirdest Pokémon game to date.

In Pokémon Pokopia, players will take on the role of a lonely Ditto who, for reasons presumably related to a grand cosmic disturbance, takes on the form of a human-like creature. This new Ditto/human hybrid can then meet other Pokémon in a cube-based world, befriending them to take on their abilities.

Ditto can, for example, turn its arms into long vines to help tend to grass, spit out water to make that grass grow, and transform its hands into boxing gloves to clear land. It is very cute, if you ignore the whole body horror aspect of Ditto literally contorting its body to interact with the environment.

It takes a bit of DNA from a few different games, namely Minecraft with its building and terraforming aspect and Animal Crossing with its social aspects, but its biggest inspiration seems to be in the Dragon Quest Builders series. Looking at who’s developing the game, it’s not surprising that it looks and feels a lot like that — Koei Tecmo, which previously developed Dragon Quest Builders 2, is co-developing the title alongside Pokémon creator Game Freak.

No firm release date has been set for Pokémon Pokopia just yet, but Nintendo says it’s set to be released on the Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026.

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