“Pikmin Bloom,” an AR cell recreation, is Niantic’s subsequent collaboration with Nintendo – TechCrunch

Niantic introduced yesterday that its subsequent augmented actuality cell recreation can be Pikmin Bloom, a collaboration with Nintendo. The free recreation is on the market now for iOS and Android in Singapore and Australia, however will roll out globally within the coming days.

Like Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom will encourage gamers to get outdoors and discover their neighborhoods. Solely now, as an alternative of catching Pidgey and Rattata, you’ll acquire seedlings and create a squad of Pikmin. The extra you stroll, the extra Pikmin you’ll acquire. These plant-animal hybrid creatures come from Nintendo’s technique and puzzle recreation franchise of the identical identify.

Pikmin Bloom marks the sixth installment within the Pikmin online game sequence. There are various various kinds of Pikmin to work together with, and as you stroll alongside them, you’ll depart augmented actuality trails of flowers behind you. In line with in-game footage within the announcement video (seen above), it seems like you possibly can customise your avatar as a Mii.

One other function that borrows from Pokémon Go is Pikmin Bloom’s month-to-month Neighborhood Day occasions. Within the former, gamers are lured outside with particular bonuses and uncommon featured Pokémon as soon as monthly, encouraging individuals to get outdoors and befriend fellow gamers. Niantic hasn’t launched particulars, however the firm mentioned that it’ll host month-to-month Neighborhood Day occasions for Pikmin as properly to plant and play collectively.

Pokémon Go has a weekly pop-up on Monday mornings that reveals you ways far you’ve walked that week. However Pikmin appears extra particularly geared towards encouraging motion, displaying the routes you walked and the steps you took on the finish of day by day.

The final time the 2 firms launched a recreation collectively, it shattered expectations — so, no stress to our floral mates. Even when Pokémon Go doesn’t really feel as ubiquitous because it did in summer season 2016, it’s making Niantic extra money than ever, netting over $1 billion in 2020. However it doesn’t fairly appear to be there’s as a lot to do but in Pikmin Bloom as there’s in Pokémon Go or Harry Potter: Wizards Unite. So, this recreation may be geared towards a extra informal crowd who simply need to see some fairly pixels whereas they stroll — no shiny-hunting and raid battle coordination right here…not less than not but.