Pokopia's Bubbly Basin Strikes The Perfect Balance Between Fresh And Familiar

Pokopia's Bubbly Basin Somehow Feels Familiar And Fresh At The Same Time Published Aug 20, 2026, 8:40 AM EDT Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. One of the most impressive things about Pokemon Pokopia is its ability to have you effectively repeat the same steps over and over as you move to different locales without ever becoming stale. It strikes the perfect balance between making everywhere you go and everything you do feel familiar without getting repetitive. When I discovered the Bubbly Basin expansion would effectively be an extension of that, I worried the formula might be spread too thin. I Should Never Have Doubted Those Responsible For Pokopia’s Success How foolish I was to assume such a thing. Not only does Bubbly Basin maintain the perfect balance between familiar and fresh, but it takes it to an entirely new level. A level achieved by dramatically changing the backdrop. You're not just finding Pokemon, researching habitats, and rebuilding the Pokemon Center in a new area; you're doing it in an area that's almost entirely underwater. The underwater of it all really is just a small part of what makes this continuation of the impressive Pokopia formula work so well, though. As drastic a change of scenery as leaving dry land is, putting a bare-bones area down there with some uninspired DLC missions wouldn't have been enough. Bubbly Basin also feels like a progression of the base game without feeling like it's something separate at the same time. It's something expansions in other games fall foul of so often, but a pitfall Pokopia’s creators have managed to avoid. The best way to explain what I mean is to have you imagine gifting someone a complete edition of Pokopia, should that ever exist in the future, without pointing out what's part of the base game and what was added later via DLC. Since you can access Bubbly Basin by the time you've re-established the Pokemon Center in Bleak Beach, one of the first areas you unlock, that player would assume it's just an alternate path they can take. Bubbly Basin Has Been Seamlessly Sewn Into Pokopia’s World It's not just when you can unlock Bubbly Basin that achieves the feat of making the expansion feel like a part of the core game rather than an add-on. The collectibles you find hinting at what happened to the post-apocalyptic world in which Pokopia is set are just as cryptic as the ones you find elsewhere. They somehow add to the wider story without spoiling it, even if you haven't been to the later areas and pieced together more of what's going on. The quests you're tasked with also feel more involved without becoming so intense that if someone relatively early on in their Pokopia adventure were to discover Bubbly Basin, it wouldn't overwhelm them. There's a lot going on, new Pokemon to discover, and different questlines to piece together, but at no point is someone who is into this game, no matter how long they've been playing, going to feel overwhelmed by the stuff Popplio and Chinchou are asking of you. Nor is a seasoned Pokopia player going to be bored to tears by it. The risk with Pokopia DLC that doesn't require you to complete the main quest first was feeling like you had been pulled out of the world you've spent hours rebuilding and placed somewhere else. That's not at all what this expansion does. Bubbly Basin is very much an extension of that same world, not a new one that exists elsewhere. That might sound obvious and seem simple, especially if you've already played the DLC, but go play a few other expansions in other games, and you'll realize it really isn't as easy as it seems. Pokopia Wasn’t The Mega Hit It Has Become When Work On This DLC Began The even bigger risk associated with that would have been removing what has made Pokopia so unexpectedly popular. I imagine this DLC has been in the pipeline since before Pokopia was released, which means plans were in place long before the spinoff became a surprise mega hit. It has already sold five million copies and will almost certainly be the best-selling Pokemon spinoff ever by the end of the year. That's a lot more people to potentially disappoint, and a lot of virtual worlds to ruin, had the DLC not felt new, exciting, seamless, and familiar all at once. Bubbly Basin is only the first of three promised Pokopia expansions. My fears ahead of part one naturally applied across the board before it was released. Now that I've already spent more hours than I can count in the DLC, not only do I have all the faith in the world that the next two expansions will perfectly strike that same necessary balance, but I'm excited to see where exactly Pokopia will take us next. Systems Released August 5, 2026 ESRB Everyone / Users Interact, In-Game Purchases Base Game Pokemon Pokopia Developer(s) Koei Tecmo, Game Freak Publisher(s) Nintendo Multiplayer Online Multiplayer