The developers behind Pokémon Pokopia held a special panel at PokémonXP 2026 this morning, giving fans an inside look at how the slow-life sandbox game for Nintendo Switch 2 came together. The panel brought together Shigeru Ohmori, Concept and Senior Director at Game Freak, Takuto Edagawa, Chief Director at Koei Tecmo Games, and Kanako Murata, producer at The Pokémon Company.

Ohmori explained that the idea for the game traces back to his time working on Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. While mapping out the Hoenn region, he remembered how excited he felt watching wild Pokémon appear from grass he had placed on the map. That moment stuck with him and eventually grew into the idea for a game centered on discovering Pokémon through map-making itself. He also felt that a Pokémon’s personality doesn’t always need a traditional RPG battle system to come through.

One of the toughest parts of development turned out to be dialogue. Since every Pokémon in the game can talk and has its own personality, the team had to write, balance, debug, and translate a large amount of unique dialogue. Murata added that localization was especially tricky, since each Pokémon’s personality needed to come through clearly no matter what language players were reading in.

The decision to make Ditto the main character came early on. Its Transform ability lets it communicate with other Pokémon and use human tools, and by copying other Pokémon, Ditto can pick up abilities like watering plants, clearing obstacles with Leafage, gliding across water, and even flying to reach new areas. This setup also gave the writing team room to explore the emotional side of Pokémon in more detail.

The panelists also shared some personal favorites from the game. Ohmori picked Leafage, Edagawa chose Rollout, which he said he uses often during playtesting, and Murata went with Splash, which lets Ditto hop over obstacles. The group also talked about Expansion Pass Part 1, Bubbly Basin, which added the Dive ability along with a new underwater area. Edagawa said giving water-type Pokémon a proper underwater habitat had been a goal for the team since early in development.

Toward the end of the panel, the developers spoke about how much they’ve enjoyed seeing what the Pokémon Pokopia community has built, including fan recreations of towns and routes from earlier Pokémon games using their own custom structures. Looking ahead, Expansion Pass Part 2 and Part 3 are both still in development, and the base game will also continue to receive free updates focused on quality-of-life improvements.