Pokémon Pokopia’s ‘Cloud Islands’ Are The Dream Feature The Next Animal Crossing Needs

The upcoming cozy town builder spin-off Pokémon Pokopia is looking more and more appealing by the week for Animal Crossing fans, and a newly revealed cloud island feature might just seal the deal!

Speaking to Famitsu in a long-form interview, the game’s developers shared more details on exactly how online multiplayer will work in this new life simulator. You’ll be able to invite friends over to your own personal ‘story’ island, but they’ll be limited in what they can do to avoid progressing your own story without your permission.

In a similar manner to the Version 3.0’s Slumber Islands, you can also build on a completely separate ‘blank island’ with friends and develop it together. But what takes Pokémon Pokopia to the next level is a ‘cloud island’ system that lets friends play together, even if the owner of the island isn’t currently online.

There are many other games with a similar type of multiplayer, but a Minecraft server comparison is likely the most broadly applicable.

If you’ve ever played a Minecraft server with friends where you log off, but they keep building while you’re away, and then you can come online later seeing the progress that’s built up around you in your absence — that’s the experience Pokémon Pokopia can offer with the cloud island feature!

And while only 4 players can play simultaneously on a cloud island, the developers say there’s no limit to the total number of people who can participate overall by taking turns in joining the island at different times. So you could have a dozen different friends working together on an island, even if they can’t all play at the same time.

It’s quite a pleasant surprise as we don’t typically see this sort of more advanced online feature from Nintendo franchises, but it does speak to how Pokopia is being primarily developed by an outside developer.

What Slumber Islands Should Have Been

It’s easy to look at cloud islands in Pokémon Pokopia and wonder what Slumber Islands in the latest 3.0 update for Animal Crossing: New Horizons could have been with the same approach.

Even though they’re technically an online feature attached to Nintendo Switch Online, you can only build on a slumber island when the host is online, while Pokopia will let you keep on working when they go offline.

An obvious advantage of this approach is that you can still experience playing Animal Crossing together with a friend, even when you’re busy on different schedules and have a tough time lining up an exact time to play.

In many ways, this type of online server gameplay is the modern version of what Animal Crossing on GameCube tried to pioneer with its asynchronous local multiplayer concept. Even though you could never truly play at the same time, you could still feel the shared experience of playing together in the same town by observing the changes that occurred while you were away.

Of course, this shared experience can still be achieved in the newer games like New Horizons too when playing on the same local system, but letting people experience it with their friends and family over the internet too would be so great.

It’s easily a killer new feature for the next Animal Crossing game on Nintendo Switch 2 in our view — we really hope Nintendo is paying close attention to Pokémon Pokopia and feeling inspired to bring a similar feature to Animal Crossing!

Pokémon Pokopia releases on March 5th, 2026 exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2. You can pre-order at Amazon US here, including an in-game leaf plant pre-order bonus, and support Animal Crossing World.