Pokémon Pokopia is making a play for the cozy game market next year by giving us what is essentially an Animal Crossing game in the Pokémon universe. You play as a Ditto that transforms into a human and attempts to spruce up an island until it’s a suitable community for Pokémon. Most of these monsters look the same as they ever have, but in a new trailer, we learned the game will introduce new forms for some old Pokémon, including a white Pikachu that’s never been in the main games.
This news came as part of an extended Pokopia trailer that gave fans an overview of how Ditto will work with its growing Pokémon community to create a new home for them on an abandoned island. Some of the big announcements included that Ditto can transform into other Pokémon like Lapras and Dragonite to get around the island faster, the citizens of your island will give you quests that seem to fill out the mysteries of the island, and through Gameshare you can play cooperatively with others, even across Switch console generations, without each person having to own the game.
But perhaps most excitingly, throughout the trailer we saw a few new forms for monsters like a moss-covered Snorlax, a graying Tangrowth that acts as the game’s Professor, a paint-covered Smeargle, and most mysteriously, a white PIkachu that is shown powering up the street lights on the island.
This pale, droopy-eared Pikachu is called Peakychu. It’s a female Pikachu, as you can see from her heart-shaped tail, but why does she look like she’s ill? We don’t know yet, but I want to help her however I can. Coincidentally, there was supposed to be a White Pichu in HeartGold and SoulSilver, but it was scrapped in favor of the spiky-eared variant that made it into the RPGs as an event giveaway. Given that some of these monsters’ standard forms are probably recruitable villagers, it’s good that the actual characters have some defining features. I wouldn’t be surprised if these variants end up in games like Pokémon Go or the RPGs as a bit of cross-promotion. At the very least, Pokopia seems to have some intriguing mysteries happening alongside all the town management. We’ll find out more about Peakychu and these other forms when Pokopia launches on March 5.
