90 minutes with Pokemon Pokopia convinced me this could be the biggest cozy game since Animal Crossing, and I'm already eager to spend hundreds of hours in it

90 minutes. That's all it took to convince me that Pokemon Pokopia is going to take over my life. This cozy, Animal Crossing-flavored take on my favorite creature-collecting series is packing a real punch – moreish exploration, building, and collection mechanics combined with delightful personality and a generous dose of feel-good: even from a short preview session, this is a game I can see myself sinking hundreds of hours into.

Right from the get-go, Pokopia throws you deep into its charm. You play as a lonely Ditto, missing its old trainer (who has, ominously, disappeared without explanation), who you can customize to match your vision before being sent into a desolate region, left in total disrepair, totally absent of people and most Pokemon.

Living your best life

But that's where you can help, and where the compelling gameplay loop comes in. Unlocking more Pokemon relies on you cultivating the correct habitats for them by using abilities unlocked from your new friends (more on that shortly). You occasionally find "traces" of Pokemon that show what kind of habitat you should be looking to create, which seem pretty varied – from simple ones like tall grass for Bulbasaur, to more specific ones like an exercise area for Hitmonchan or a sauna for Politoed, you'll seemingly have to do a lot of renovation to lure in every Pokemon. Some are rarer than others, too, and it also appears that some will (like in the main series games) only appear at certain times of day.

Befriending Pokemon doesn't just add a cute new fella to your town, but in the opening stint of the game, it often unlocks one of those aforementioned abilities for you to use, too. Rock Smash can be used to – you guess it – smash rocks, while Cut can slice up logs, and Water Gun can rejuvenate dried up flowers, grass, and trees. Pokemon can also offer additional skills – Timburr, for example, has the Build skill, and can assist you in constructing houses – so there's plenty of reason to catch (or rather, befriend) 'em all.

Driving all this is a satisfying 'challenges' system that instantly reminds me of Animal Crossing: New Horizons' Nook Miles tasks. From collecting enough sticks to watering enough tiles and befriending enough Pokemon, doing certain activities and hitting milestones rewards you with Poke Coins, which can be exchanged for new decor and upgrades – I buy a bag upgrade to carry around more items, for example. Some tasks and items in the shops are labelled as "daily," bringing that real-time Animal Crossing feel to the game, and giving reason for you to keep coming back day after day to see what's new – it doesn't seem like you'll ever be at a loss of something to do.

On top of all that, you've also got exploration aspects and terraforming to delve into, allowing you to directly shape the world around you block by block. I don't spend a massive amount of time terraforming in my hands-on, but it seems to be limitless – using Rock Smash, I tear the scenery apart, before using a Kirby-like inhale move on the material left behind to collect it and place blocks elsewhere, Minecraft style. In one particularly satisfying moment, I smash through a crack in a cliff, causing water to cascade through and fill out a once-barren trench, turning it into a scenic waterfall and river.

All of this is underlined by some serious personality I wasn't expecting Pokopia to have. The amusing dialogue options combined with the general visual comedy of your clumsy Ditto protagonist is so charming. Even in their 'human' form, Ditto strolls around with a bounciness that could only be achieved by a sentient blob, with jelly-like limbs that flail around as they go. Rapidly rotating the analog stick makes them spin like a whirlwind, with an abrupt stop causing their arms to get wrapped around them, tying them up like a rope. They also hold furniture in their mouth before spitting it out to place it – the moment I abruptly swallowed a chair for the first time using Stockpile genuinely made me laugh out loud, and I can't wait to see what other moments like this Pokopia has in store.

As someone who's been waiting years for a new Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game, I'm very pleased that Pokopia not only brings back the talking 'mons I missed so dearly, but they all seem to have some flavor of individual personality here, too. From only an hour and a half with the game, I couldn't say how deep this goes – so far, all I can tell you is that Charmander seems like a very enthusiastic, energetic sort, while Hitmonchan loves to punch rocks (good for him).

However, you can complete tasks for each Pokemon to increase the comfort level of their habitats, as well as give them gifts which seemingly increase some kind of friendship value (Squirtle sure seemed to like the veggie I gave him, anyway). In addition, you can listen in on conversations between different Pokemon chatting, forming connections between your residents. All of this has me hopeful that they could all have some level of individuality, which, if so, could make them feel deeper than Animal Crossing villagers, which vary very little on the whole thanks to their pre-set personality categories. We'll just have to wait and see.

Pokemon Pokopia's experiences aren't limited to single-player, either, as playing in co-op is also a blast. During the second half of my preview session, I team up with two other journalists in an attempt to rebuild a dilapidated Pokemon Center. Working together, we collect resources, recruit Pokemon, and build a bridge using blocks collected from using Rock Smash on the ground. Admittedly, it's not the prettiest bridge to ever exist, but it worked for our purposes, and with more time we could have easily produced something a bit more aesthetically pleasing.

It's in this mode that I also try out a couple more of Ditto's transformations – they're not just limited to their human and Ditto forms. Namely, you can turn into Lapras to Surf across water, Dragonite to glide in the air, and, as you'd hope, they keep the silly, not-quite-perfect Ditto face in both. I cannot overstate how dang cute these transformations are – to everyone else who was in that room with me, sorry but not sorry for how loudly I announced that the Dragonite Ditto wears a tiny hat on top of its horn, but it needed to be said.

In short, Pokemon Pokopia is looking dangerously good. I've never had an early preview for a game fly by so fast, and could have easily spent the entire day sinking my teeth into the life sim and seeing how deep its systems go. Assuming it stays this engrossing beyond its opening (which, let's face it, is usually the slowest part of cozy games like this), then anyone like me who's invested hundreds of hours into Animal Crossing is under real threat of losing themselves in this to the same degree, if not more, and I'm completely here for it. This has the potential to be the biggest cozy game since Animal Crossing: New Horizons, if not the series more widely.

Before Pokemon Pokopia launches, be sure to check out our ranking of the best Pokemon games.