Pokémon Pokopia is a video game the size of a heavy blanket

Pokopia puts you in the squishy shoes of Ditto, a delightfully blob-shaped and blank-faced Pokémon with the ability to transform into another Pokémon and use its abilities. You don’t need any previous knowledge of Pokémon to play — the game teaches you everything you need to know as you go. (But if you already love Pokémon, you don’t need me to tell you that you’ll enjoy this game.)

The game begins as you wake up on an island, alone except for another Pokémon named Professor Tangrowth. Together you embark on a journey to reclaim places and bring back lost Pokémon in hopes of solving the looming mystery: Where have all the people gone?

This sandbox friendly game offers things like farming, developing friendships, and decorating from cool genre basics like Animal Crossing again Stardew Valley but they also include extensive areas to explore and terraform as you can find in similar games Minecraft. Pokopia it gave me a lot of freedom, and I loved the cliff diving and reshaping the terrain but I loved it. This was a step away from my frustration Animal Crossing experience, where I can place a bridge or a ramp exactly where I want, when I want.

As I gathered and plotted my way forward, restoring settlements along the way, many Pokémon residents came to teach me new skills to water plants, plant grass, surf, and even windsurf.

Pokopia offers more potential interaction with residents than similar games. You can ask other Pokémon to help you build new resources like houses and wells or process things like lumber or metal, and sometimes they’ll invite you to play a mini-game like jump rope or Pokémon-facts pop quizzes. You can even take photos of special occasions, à la Pokémon Snap.

And over time, as you gather your collection of Pokémon citizens and explore, you begin to fill in the mystery of what happened to all the people of Pokopia.

The restoration project covers an incredible amount of space. You have four large areas to explore and customize, including the dry Wered Wasteland, the ever-cloudy ocean, the Rocky Ridges with their underground mines, and more. Cleaning up the clutter and renovating these places, returning them to their former glory, is deeply satisfying.

In addition to those regions, Pokopia offers a great personal space to decorate and customize to your heart’s content, and it’s much bigger than Animal Crossing the island.

It’s hard to put into words how excited I was when I found out that I could invite one of my favorite Pokémon, the fluffy electric sheep Mareep, to live with me in my house. Please don’t get me started on how cute he is snoozing on the Pikachu-shaped couch in the living room.

Once a day, you can look longingly at the plushie and ask your Pokémon pal Drifloon to take you to Dream Island, where you can collect items and materials to bring back to your world. I was surprised that I could loot almost everything on Dream Island, including the windows, walls, and even the roof of the building where I was born.

And, while I can’t test it out during my review, I’m wildly excited at the prospect of decorating Cloud Island multiplayer with the help of my real-life friends.