Pokémon Pokopia: Bubbly Basin

Pokémon Pokopia released March 5, 2026, and this cozy building sim became a genuine hit with fans of both the franchise and the genre, enough that DLC talk started almost immediately. On June 5, 2026, a Nintendo Direct confirmed it: three parts, staggered through 2027. Part one, scheduled for August 5, 2026, adds a new zone, new blocks, new Pokémon, new items, and the Dive ability. Is this the DLC people actually wanted, or a $35 cash grab riding on love for the base game?

Bubbly Basin adds a new zone by the same name, a mostly submerged area left underwater by the climate disaster that predates the game’s opening. Two new events fire while you’re working through Bleak Beach, the second zone. The first happens regardless of whether you own the DLC: Professor Tangrowth spots an island you seem to have missed before, and investigating leads you to a starving Manaphy passed out on the beach. Feed it seaweed and it recovers, then teaches you the Dive function as thanks, letting you build and explore underwater without drowning after a set time, which was previously a hard limit. The second triggers when you meet a Popplio, awestruck at seeing a rebuilt area full of Pokémon. Learning you were behind it, Popplio asks you to visit its home, accessible by diving off the Bleak Beach coastline: the Bubbly Basin itself, an underwater zone full of buildings that sank into the ocean. Popplio asks for help fixing it up, and the loop runs the same as every prior zone: find the Pokémon Center, build habitats to attract new Pokémon, unlock new recipes, raise the environment level, complete requests from whoever shows up.

Bubbly Basin is great, and it’s exactly what you want from Pokopia DLC: more Pokopia. More Pokémon to find, more space to build, new resources to craft with. Pairing Dive with a fully aquatic zone is a smart move, since it lets them bring in aquatic Pokémon that would have been awkward to include under the base game’s limited water interaction, and it opens up new building options back in Withered Wastelands, Bleak Beach, and Pallet Town now that underwater areas are actually accessible.

My worry going in was that this zone would be a tiny afterthought. It’s a little smaller than the earlier zones, but it plays like a full area. Being underwater adds real verticality: islands breaking the surface, a dark bottom layer that needs light sources to navigate. New buoyant blocks let you build floating houses you can swim between, coral-themed items match the ocean aesthetic, and there’s a full imperial-style building set. Restoring these sunken structures is approachable and genuinely fun.

I personally love the ocean backdrop here. Rebuilding it gave me Finding Nemo energy, all that coral, sea flowers, and pink moss vibrancy. Watching fish Pokémon actually swim freely instead of staying floor-locked looks great.

Dive itself is good, a little awkward. Hold B to swim forward without sinking, tap the bumpers while holding B to move up or down. Great for breaking blocks, since you can hold your line without dropping, and ZL keeps you steady while placing blocks. Vacuuming up items is trickier, since you can’t move while doing it, so the practical trick is swimming up first and sucking items in as you slowly sink back down. Takes a little getting used to. Functional, just a bit clunky in feel.

The one real problem is the story, and it is genuinely weak, easily the weakest of any zone so far. Earlier zones were never Shakespeare, but they were fun and had real forward motion: one Pokémon needing help with something, another tied into that same thread, a special structure or item built along the way, all while you kept expanding habitats. By the time you finished a zone’s main quest, it felt like you’d built an actual community. Here it’s basically “clean this up to make Popplio happy, then build the Ocean Temple and get Manaphy.” A little more length or involvement would have helped. There are quest completions along the way, and building the Ocean Temple sends you after a few Pokémon with their own small side quests, but as a whole it feels rushed next to what came before. The pieces are there; they just don’t land the same. Manaphy showing up at the very end to essentially say “this looked cool, I’ll live here now” instead of being the actual reason you built the temple in the first place is a missed opportunity. The thin story is forgivable since you’re mostly getting more of what you already loved about the base game, but with a real narrative, this could have been a 10.

A few more Pokémon would have helped too. Roughly fifty new additions, which is a decent number, though the selection could have been sharper. Bruxish, Stunfisk, and Veluza are fine fish picks, but you literally build a clock featuring Seel and Dewgong on it without including either one in the actual roster. Getting to recruit Kyogre into an ocean-themed zone would have been a fun swing too, though I get why that didn’t happen.

Bubbly Basin gives the base game more of what made it great, which is what I wanted from this. Two parts remain with no real details yet on what part three’s zone will be or what part two adds. As a first chapter, this is a solid start. Whether $35 is justified while the rest of the DLC is still rolling out is a fair question, and I don’t love the staggered release structure, but I’m genuinely invested in seeing where the next two parts go.