I've been trying to have a beer with Kim Swift for about five years now, and it finally happened. She suggested The Bine up in Bothell, and you should draft on that suggestion. I'm afraid I made a pun there without meaning to. But it's also real close to Zulu's, a place you might want to be anyway. Anywhoozle, the last half of the meetup was just her breaking down how Pokopia is a masterclass of game design. A little while later, a sheepish server came over and said, "I don't want to interrupt… but were you talking about Pokopia?"

She was.

Not me. I'm scared to death of it. I caught one of their previous games, like a fever - Dragon Quest Builders 2 - and it ate every useful second of the day. This is that, plus ye olde magick like Dungeon Keeper or Viva Pinata, with some Animal Crossing shit. Except that isn't enough to explain it, apparently, because something happens when you combine these things. It's completely laid Mork out; he's been trying to find hot birds in his area. I already have Slay the Spire 2 to deal with. I don't need any of this!

One of the obsessions I have for creative work in general is the idea that they are a kind of creature with a lineage, and the developer of Pokopia - Omega Force - has a crazy pedigree. After cooking up Dynasty Warriors, which has seen a Samurai reskin, a Dragon Quest reskin, a Gundam reskin, a Fire Emblem reskin, a Persona Reskin, a One Piece reskin, other reskins I don't recognize, and now a Hyrule era that routinely sells millions of copies, maybe they aren't reskins but constitute a coherent genre they are the proprietors of. WinBack makes me think they might have, uh, invented many of the conventions of the third person cover shooter. There's other weirdo crap in there too, including the dangerous Dragon Quest Builders game I mentioned above - they've developed a proven reputation for treating treasured intellectual properly gingerly. I would never have picked them for a Pokemon game, and yet. And yet!

(CW)TB out.