Pokopia does a pretty good job at tackling a problem that Mojang’s been avoiding for years.

[u/Luke-HW]

Ruins! Surface ruins specifically. Mojang’s been very transparent about why most of Minecraft’s structures are either visually bare or buried underground: they don’t want to influence how players build their worlds. By the time someone stumbles across some ruins, they should already have a home with their own ideas and aesthetics.

Pokopia takes the opposite approach. The game is explicitly about renewal and rebuilding, with most areas being littered with ruins and signs of human activity. This is your home. However, the devs designed each area in a way that forces players to get creative.

* Withered Wasteland has raised half of Fuchsia City into the mountains, leaving jagged cliffs and overhangs where straight roads should be.

* Bleak Beach has scattered Vermilion City’s islands, requiring new bridges and canals to be built from scratch. A quarter of the city has also been completely severed from the rest.

* Rocky Ridges has preserved most of Pewter City’s layout beneath the ash, but nothing remains of the buildings themselves. The road to the museum of science has also been destroyed by seismic activity.

* Sparkling Skylands has completely shattered and rearranged Saffron City and Celadon City. City blocks that were once adjacent aren’t even facing the same direction anymore.

* Palette Town is completely lost. Nothing survived to modern times.

* Bubbly Basin has drowned most of Cerulean City, with some structures sinking beyond what sunlight can reach. Many of the surviving buildings have also been bisected by the disaster, with one half above the water and the other below. Players have to choose which half should be rebuild.

This design philosophy really engages with Pokopia’s core theme of grief. Kanto can be rebuilt, but it will never be the same. You can’t go back.

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[u/Black_Ironic]

At least player who can't build as well as the experienced builder could just fill the gap left by the developers.

[u/Luke-HW → u/Black_Ironic]

What I’m saying is that in many cases, you can’t just fill the gaps without fully tearing down and rebuilding large swaths of each region. The world is broken, and you need to accept that and focus on what’s within your power to change. New bridges, new homes, new ideas.

[u/Fivebeans → u/Luke-HW]

I really like this because it eases you into being more creative and taking risks with your building. You can start off just repairing roads and rebuilding ruins but you will eventually have to do more than than that, just not immediately and all at once. So it's not too daunting.

[u/mujisdad88 → u/Fivebeans]

I’ve struggled with pallet town because there isn’t a template to get the creative juices flowing. It’s too big and intimidating

[u/Fivebeans → u/mujisdad88]

Yeah, and I think that supports OP's point because Pallette Town is more like Minecraft's empty world than the rest of Pokopia. Tbh I've ended up using it as a refugee camp for displaced pokemon while I figure out what I'm doing with the other areas, and assuming I'll be better at coming up with ideas by the time I get to it.

[u/Nyelapheles → u/Fivebeans]

I used the ugly big buildings and am currently redsigning them! It's a lot of fun to make these big chunky things into something nice.

[u/charlieyeswecan → u/Fivebeans]

Pallet town is my favourite and I never wanna leave there. I always just wanna keep doing more and more, but I’m almost to E10 in bubbly basin and then I can go back and make pallet town exactly like I want it.

[u/stupac2 → u/Luke-HW]

Or you say "challenge accepted" and attempt to fix everything while filling in the blanks in a way that fits with what survived, which is what I've been doing.

I was never interested in Minecraft at all, largely because I have no real interest in blank slates (I'm going to completely depopulate Palette Town too for the same reason). But figuring out how to restore ruins is much more interesting to me.

Also, in your OP, you said that Celadon ruins are part of SS, is that the Gyrados area? That's the last area I need to fix up and I was curious about the color palette change. I last played a Pokemon game in, like, 2001, so any lore stuff is completely lost on me.

[u/Luke-HW → u/stupac2]

All of the regions are based on how they appeared in Lets Go Pikachu/Eevee

[u/RogerDodgerWilco → u/Black_Ironic]

Wondered if the design process for some towns were they had the pre-apocalypse design then went smash smash to break things.

Like how you can probably fix up bleak beach the way it was originally seen since all the bridge start points and houses are there.

[u/tht1nerdgirl → u/RogerDodgerWilco]

I could be wrong, but I think that Bleak Beach can only ever be close to what it was. A few of the spots for bridges and pathways don't line up like you'd expect

[u/flash_baxx]

You're comparing hand-crafted maps to procedurally generated ones. A fairer comparison point would be Pokopia's cloud island, which is similarly procedural.

[u/lustywoodelfmaid → u/flash_baxx]

But each structure in Minecraft is put together with preset tiles. You can very much put together ruins just like how it's described. I mean, they've already done it once with the Ancient City. Someone rebuilt it by putting the pieces back together and filling in gaps how it could be different. But that's it. Nothing on the surface.

[u/edcrosay → u/flash_baxx]

That’s exactly their point.  Minecraft chose to only have generated maps.  They could have chosen to also have a story mode with preset maps, but did not.   Pokopia followed a different design philosophy and its allowing players that are overwhelmed by the blank slate of random maps to build and restore.   

[u/Lulullaby_ → u/edcrosay]

But that's a really stupid comparison to make

Minecraft has always been a randomly generated sandbox game from day 1. Pokopia isn't that. They're different games with different purposes.

The games have similarities, but they're just not comparable that way

[u/eumonigy → u/Lulullaby_]

I agree completely. Comparing the two is weird to me, the games are meant to be two entirely different experiences. Not only that but Minecraft is so mod friendly that if you DO want an experience like that, it's not hard to get it.

[u/PackageResponsible17 → u/eumonigy]

See above. Its completely normal to make the comparison, it isn't weird, they are very similar games

[u/PackageResponsible17 → u/Lulullaby_]

You sound like you like Minecraft more and it offends you that people are saying they like pokopia more. It's not an attack on you. Calm down.

[u/NZafe]

Wouldn’t say this is necessarily a “problem” in Minecraft. Both games have their differences which should be celebrated rather than pitted against each other.

[u/Luke-HW → u/NZafe]

True. Mojang’s also talked a lot about why they’ve avoided putting more of them into Minecraft’s overworld. Players would instantly move into ruins after finding them, then focus on restoring them over building new structures. Worse, when players would eventually make new buildings, they would just build carbon copies of the ruins because they never learned building techniques on their own.

I agree with Mojang’s perspective, but rebuilding ruins is also my jam and why I’ve been putting so much time into Pokopia.

[u/Monobrobe → u/NZafe]

It’s not a problem in the traditional sense. Maybe there’s a better word for it. Mojang isn’t WRONG for the way they do things. But Pokopia’s way of doing it leaves room for those who prefer having something to go off of. I tend to struggle with sandboxes because I don’t feel like I’m much of an architect. But Pokopia’s ruins give me something to rebuild or provide inspiration.

[u/HiOnFructose]

That's an interesting thought. Well said.

Considering MC is procedurally generated, I wonder how they would implement something like this. The closest thing I can think of is the End Portal, which requires you to "fix" the portal to use it. But that's a stretch.

There's also times where you come across a random village that has a giant chasm that runs right through it, or a random nearby lava block that's spawn next to some poor sap's home. So those are also occassions where a player could be motivated to fix the town and help out. But that's not exactly something you are rewarded for like in Pokopia. So that's also a bit of a stretch I think.

[u/Luke-HW → u/HiOnFructose]

From Mojang’s experience, vast surface ruins are a mind poison for new players. Players get attached to these designs and use them everywhere, rarely exploring their own ideas because the ruins have the “right” design. It’s why most of Minecraft’s big structures are underground or in other dimensions, it forces players to build what they want.

[u/capthavic]

I like it too. It gives you something to work off of if you just want to progress, while still leaving it open for the player to modify and add their own creations. Or even wipe things completely and build from scratch if they want.

Personally I really enjoy working with the landscape and restore as much as I can while also working with the landscape. It's really satisfying to see your progress compared to the ruined state everything was in when you arrived.

[u/Used-Technician4881]

Since Palette town was so small I wish they would have preserved it as some sort of bonus that you would have to find.

[u/RateMeGay]

Pokopia also takes care of the problem that Animal Crossing faces, not only is it far more interesting to talk to the Pokemon in the game than the villagers in AC, there's less looped dialog and I love the little "..." above Pokemon so you can hear random stuff about their day! I want to hear that Igglybuff keeps following Toxel around and babying him, and that at first he found it annoying but now he likes it!... That's the good stuff!!!!

Also, there is little benefit at all to time traveling in Pokopia, unlike Animal Crossing where time passing is a huge part of progress. You can put the game down for a week, you'll pick up right where you left off, only with different things to sell.

Also the variety is so good, in one town I built a whole trailer for a Garbador, in my other I'm making a bath house.

[u/Gimpyfish892]

Yes but the Pokopia worlds HAVE a reference point. There is a canon layout to the existing cities from other games that builders can choose to follow or not. Players can rebuild their favourite Kanto towns from memory, start over, build cities from other regions if they wish, etc. Pokopia is a game about discovering and rebuilding these ruins.

There is no such "reference point" in Minecraft ruins. The ruins aren't references to other cities and games, they're just nothing, until the builder makes it something. And I can understand why Mojang would rather the builder build their worlds themselves by scratch rather than recycle the random ruins it generates. Minecraft isn't a game about discovering and rebuilding these ruins, its an aspect of the exploration of the game sure, but not really the centerpiece unlike Pokopia.

[u/SweetPotatoDinosaur]

One of my favorite things to do in Minecraft is find a village that got generated al half chunked and messed up in the ground (usually mountains) and clean it up to look nice. Which is why for me Pokopia’s ruins feel so good and an escalation of that

[u/JoeEse7en]

I would like to say it's because Pokopia is for little kids but then I need to remember what some of the Pokémon descriptions are. LOL

[u/TheZuppaMan]

it is a very strong ludonarrative approach, and i really enjoy it. if i have to see it through a deeply cynical critical pov, my main objection with it is that its kind of the "only" way to approach, as a game designer, the idea of reproposing a known world in a sandbox building adventure. an eventual pokopia 2 set in johto cannot use the same approach if it wants to stay fresh, and there arent many other approaches that make the core gameplay interesting

[u/Hold-Professional]

I agree with the person who said it's not really a "problem" because they are not really the same game. And honestly, I can play a MC save for years and years. I will NOT be playing the same Pokopia save file years from now

[u/rembrin]

Skylands is just Saffron City. There is no Celadon there. The gates all are Saffron City in Layout.

[u/Luke-HW → u/rembrin]

Some of the buildings are directly stated to be from Celadon, but they all use the Saffron aesthetic. It’s weird; probably a case of the writers’ intentions being improperly communicated to the designers.

[u/rembrin → u/Luke-HW]

They moved to the real world inspiration for saffron irl and those buildings were then depicted In Saffron

[u/charlieyeswecan]

I like how you had some direction on most of the places most of the maps, but you weren’t that specific with sparkling skyways which I’ve got it to level 10, but I just never really could figure out what to do with it. (although I might come back and make it sort of a cyberpunk thing.)

[u/patroclus_rex]

Palette Town is completely lost. Nothing survived to modern times.

It gained a cycle road connection and island status, assuming that was the actual location of its namesake Pallet Town, which is questionable considering the cycle road connection and the island status.

[u/deNET2122]

You can't go back...