This article contains light location and story spoilers from Pokémon Pokopia. If you want to enjoy the game completely fresh, you may want to just read our review.

As a big fan of post-apocalyptic media and disaster movies, I’ve always yearned for a game, TV show or movie that shows you what happens after all the bad stuff happens. Fallout is close, but it’s set in an alternative future and they’re clearly never getting their shit together. The Last of Us? Well, that’s clear they’re also not really going back either. Then there’s movies, all the good stuff either shows the disaster, which growing up in the 90s there was no shortage of to enjoy, but the movie always ends when the White House starts getting rebuilt or there’s a big song over the credits and “we will rebuild”.

Yeah, that’s the part I want to see and do!

Now I’m sure there is some media out there that does this, I haven’t watched every movie or TV show ever, but nothing I have found so far has come close to scratching that itch as much as Pokémon Pokopia.

A game that when I first saw it, I honestly didn’t think about it much, but the more we learned about it, and the more I’ve played it, this is the game I’ve been looking for possibly all my life.

Pokémon Pokopia, like millions of others, has hooked me in, and maybe not just for the same reasons as everyone else. There’s the addictive gameplay loop, the adorable characters and writing, and there’s the whole being able to play something with my daughter with no combat in it.

But I think it’s the game being set in the post-apocalyptic region of Kanto that’s doing it for me. It’s not something that’s spelled out on the box, it’s not in the game until hours in, and until you start piecing it together, until you see that rotting SS Anne in what remains of Vermilion City, that it all links up. Seeing the Pokémon Fan Club in ruins, with the Pokédolls still there, as well, that was a moment.

The game makes it obvious early on that the humans have left, but it’s not clear right away exactly where you are or that you’ve been here before. The game’s maps are based around towns and areas from Kanto, and the game hides that for a while. Eventually you start learning more about what’s going on, and I won’t spoil that, but the more you play the more you see what went down, and that’s how the game has got me. I need to know what happened, and you know what, if the stupid humans won’t come back then me, Ditto, is going to rebuild the world in their image, but better.

For 30 years we’ve been using Pokémon in battles and trades, but here on their own they’re their own people, and like when your parents get old, it’s time to look after them.

I haven’t finished the game yet, with a healthy schedule of other games to review and life in general, it might take me a while to finish the story, but I think I can piece it together, and even since starting this article I’ve come across many more “oh crap, it’s that” moments.

I never thought a Pokémon game would be the piece of media to finally give me the feeling of rebuilding a post-apocalyptic world. But here we are.