Pokopia, storytelling and ADHD

Something something I know I'm too old for Pokemon but something something

I didn’t know I had an arch-nemesis until I started playing Pokopia, but I’m certain this game was specifically created to ruin me.

I’m sorry if you thought this game was actually for you, or perhaps for a multi-generational global audience of Pokemon fans, but no: this game was made to undermine an ADHD-addled writer in their thirties with two decades’ worth of affection for Pokemon and a big list of things they ought to be doing instead.

There’s so much about Pokopia that caught me off guard, but the biggest thing was its story. The mystery and melancholy of its premise are surprisingly dark for a game that’s so eye-bleedingly colourful. Forget Pixar making you cry in the first ten minutes of Up: Pokopia might get you on the character creation screen.

You are a shapeshifting Pokemon named Ditto (just in the game - not in real life, as far as I know). You’ve woken up in a post-apocalyptic world. There are no humans. And the first thing you do is turn yourself into a dopey, adorable, gangly-limbed doppelgänger of your beloved missing Trainer. After that, you set out into a barren, abandoned world to - slowly but surely - try and make the world inhabitable again. Maybe if you make things better, the humans - your human, wherever they are - will come back.

“Show, don’t tell” is a well-worn bit of storytelling advice that means we should be able to understand what a character wants and feels through their action, not their words. The people who made Pokopia understand this in their bones. The whole game is built around storytelling through action in a way that games are uniquely able to do: a way where you, as the player, are telling your character’s story through your actions.

Ditto has no dialogue beyond some short, goofy responses to other Pokemon’s questions. The other Pokemon have very characterful, silly voices - I particularly enjoyed Gyrados as an old-timey country lad - but at no point does Ditto tell you, or anyone, how much they miss their person.

Words aren’t needed. Right from the moment you decide how you want Ditto’s missing Trainer to look, you - as the player - are telling that story in this world: actively, through the choices you make when you play.

Everything single thing you choose to do in Pokopia - every step you take to rewild and rebuild; to take one ruined town at a time and make it a little nicer, a little more habitable, with hope but no promise of bringing people back… by playing the game, you are telling the story of this weird little Ditto and how much he loves his human. It’s gentle, but it’s powerful.

And not only is your Ditto’s motivation clear through their actions, but your motivation - the player’s motivation - is the same. This is what I love about how interactive media can tell stories differently: everything you do is not just progressing the story: you’re telling the story yourself, through gameplay.

There is so much freedom with how you spend your time in Pokopia - so much freedom of approach to rebuilding the world - that your story of how you took these towns from desolate wastelands to thriving towns teeming with Pokemon is going to feel unique to every player. And every time you make a little, personal design choice - like, if you’re me, spending at least twenty minutes building a whole new bridge with a fancy patterned tile - you’re making a narrative choice too. You’re hoping that enough of these little touches will be enough, together, to convince humans to return from wherever they’ve gone. Even though you don’t know for sure that they even can come back.

Maybe this is all coming from a place of needing to justify the hours upon hours I am spending on this game with a Take About Writing… but Pokopia really does understand the fundamentals of storytelling at its simplest and most effective. Your Ditto has a character-driven, emotionally resonant need that leads to motivated action with a clear goal. And that lack of certainty about whether what you’re doing will even work - that’s what keeps you playing. I’m not going to pretend that Pokopia was ever going to toy with a tragic, hopeless ending for its story - but it knows it can’t promise you success. You are motivated by possibility - by hope as much as need.

And I love how much those ideas are woven into the game’s environmental themes. It feels really powerful, in 2026, to play a game that is so explicit about what it wants to say. Pokopia wants you to know that EVEN IF the world gets irreparably fucked by forces beyond your control… you can make things better, one tiny step at a time, by building community, working together, and finding a shared purpose.

That shouldn’t feel as revolutionary as it does, but when most other games - including most Pokemon games - are built around the idea of individualistically becoming the best, it almost feels subversive. As someone who writes stories for younger audiences, I am thrilled that one of the biggest franchises in the whole world is giving its younger players a game with this much thematic heft. It’s not didactic, it’s not preachy… but it’s not afraid to make its case. It feels bolder to me than it might get the credit for.

But it’s the way all these narrative ideas feed into their gameplay loop is what makes Pokopia compulsive. The developers have pulled off the same brilliant design trick that Nintendo did in Breath of the Wild: they have filled the world with what I would call “productive distractions”.

On your way to complete whatever task you’ve set out to do, you’ll spot some intriguing opportunity nearby - a habitat you can create to lure out a new Pokemon, or a hidden cave to investigate… something that piques your curiosity and draws you in. And the game rewards you for getting distracted. There’s a refreshing lack of urgency to everything you’re encouraged to do in Pokopia. You have the freedom to tackle tasks in any order, at whatever pace you feel like… because everything you do is a tiny little step on the path to creating a better world.

This is equal parts fantastic game design, delightful theming, and an absolute fuck-you to anyone with both ADHD and an unstructured workday.

That’s the seductive lure of this world for me: the real fantasy wish-fulfilment this game offers. Not a completely customisable Pokemon paradise, but a world where every distraction is productive. Where constant, impulsive task-switching always feels in service of your ultimate goal. Where your purpose defines everything you do. I might be unproductive while playing Pokopia, but I’m never unproductive in Pokopia.

And I have done enough therapy to know that, in real life, that I shouldn’t define myself by my productivity. That - as a human being and not a character in a story - I don’t need everything I do to be in service of my quote-unquote “purpose”. But knowing it and feeling it are two different things - and god, it makes playing this game a very conflicted pleasure. Pokopia is a game built around giving me everything my weirdly-wired brain wants, and now I can’t stop playing it.

That’s the nice thing about having an arch-nemesis, really: no-one knows you better.