Pokopia Convinced Me We Could Have A Pokémon Horror Game

Like everyone else, I’ve been playing a lot of Pokopia lately, the latest Pokémon spin-off. I am delighted to get to see all my favorite Pokémon and play as a goofy-looking Ditto kid in a colorful world.

But more than anything, I love exploring to search for records and logs that recount how the world ended. The slow drip of information that leads to the realization that players are in a post-apocalyptic version of Kanto creates a chilling undertone to a game with a cheerful surface, and more than anything, it’s convinced me that we should get a Pokémon horror game.

Pokémon Loves Being Creepy

Pokémon has always had creepy elements. In the very first game, players could encounter ghosts in Pokémon Tower that couldn’t be fought, the Pokédex is infamous for having creepy entries about otherwise cute Pokémon, and reveal trailers for Hisuian Zorua, Greavard, Sinistcha, Mega Victreebel, and Mega Malamar are all stylized like horror films.

But being creepy isn’t enough to make a good horror game. It’s one thing to make the player jump over a 3-minute trailer; it’s much harder to maintain that atmosphere for a whole game.

Pokémon’s horror elements have always been on the periphery because once you’re looking right at them, they’re usually just Pokémon. Places like the Old Chateau? Full of ghost Pokémon. The Ultra Beasts, bizarre alien creatures that threaten Alola? Just Pokémon. Eternatus, a massive swirling monstrosity that causes giant Pokémon to go rampaging around the land? It’s a Pokémon at the end of the day.

And if everything is a Pokémon, you have two options: you either beat it or you catch it. If you can’t do those things, you grind until you can.

Broadly, horror games fall on this spectrum: How easy is it for players to hurt whatever’s chasing them?

In something like Dead Space, where you are given weapons that are effective against most monsters you come across, players are still tense or on edge while exploring because the game successfully convinces them that a single mistake could get them killed. So it’s important to always be vigilant.

Games where you can’t directly shoot what’s coming after you, like Little Nightmares, rely on puzzles and traps to either do damage or escape unscathed.

Either way, the player is tense because they have to be. They have to be prepared to react quickly, and that’s hard to pull off in Pokémon, where it might be theoretically true that a Scyther could cut off your head, but it isn’t literally true.

Even with the Alpha Pokémon in the Legends series, the player knows where they are for the most part; they have a limited range in which they will give chase, and it’s easy to get around them with a little practice.

There are very few things in Pokémon that the player can’t handle, which is perhaps even more of an argument that a horror game would be new and novel. Pokémon is, at its core, a power fantasy, so what happens when you take the power out?

But the place of a horror game is just as important as the monster, and that’s where Pokopia convinces me that we could see a good horror game. Pokopia makes very good use of its space.

Pokopia’s World Design Is Very Good

There’s, of course, the way the cities are designed with just enough detail surviving the wreckage that an experienced fan can piece together where they are. Finding the wreckage of the Pewter City museum deep in a cave, or visiting an island only to discover it was the SS Anne, are great moments and rewards to encourage players to explore.

But there’s also the way caves and areas are designed to guide players to the next bit of lore, and conveniently loop them back to where they started. No matter what ADHD-induced sidequest you end up on, you will end up finding something new and useful.

Pokopia makes very good use of its space and environment to tell the story, in a way I don’t think I’ve seen from a mainline Pokémon game, outside of perhaps certain dungeons. Usually, people simply tell the player what’s going on, but this allows the players to figure it out for themselves and go deeper if need be. That translates incredibly well to make a compelling horror game.

I love seeing large franchises with full worlds explore different genres. Not everyone in the Pokémon world is a professional trainer or likes battling, so stories that take the story in places we wouldn’t have thought possible before excite me. At the end of the day, if Pokémon tried a horror game, I’d play it even if it sucked.

But Pokopia gives me hope that the right team can build an amazing game set in the Pokémon world. And there’s no shortage of stories and ghosts to pull from.