Hoenn’s Influence: How GBA Pokémon Sparked Pokopia

Pokémon Pokopia’s unusual life-sim premise can be traced back to the Game Boy Advance era, according to Game Freak. Director Shigeru Ohmori told VGC that while developing Scarlet & Violet he revisited the early design work from Ruby & Sapphire, and those experiments led to a playable prototype for the new title.

• Pokopia flips the usual formula: players take the role of a humanoid Ditto tasked with restoring a collapsed society alongside friendly Pokémon.
• Ohmori says the concept emerged from thinking about habitats and initial encounters with Pokémon, ideas he originally explored during the Hoenn generation.
• The project advanced into a prototype while the team was searching for fresh directions during the Scarlet & Violet development cycle.
• The revelation came during a preview event in Tokyo and was shared by Ohmori in an interview with VGC, highlighting Game Freak’s iterative design approach.

Pokopia’s roots in the GBA-era design sensibility underline how past experiments at Game Freak continue to inform new, genre-bending Pokémon projects.

Source: Nintendo Life