What is Pokopia? Inside the calming Pokémon game that ditches battles for gardening

We explore the cosy world-building spin-off with Game Freak's Shigeru Ohmori and his fellow developers - and learn how it began with a Pokemon-hunting dream

Pokemon is celebrating its 30th anniversary this month, and everybody knows what to expect from these games by now. The concept is simple: head into a cartoonish paradise full of whimsical creatures, capture them in red-and-white balls and assemble a team of warriors from them, before battling other aspiring Pokemon masters. But the latest entry in the series is different - a game that's more about building than battling.

In Pokopia, a refreshingly pacific twist on the series, players are dropped into a virtual world where Pokemon are freed from their spherical prisons and happily roam their natural habitats. There's one minor caveat - you have to create those habitats by hand, building them from what you can find.