Pikmin Bloom Review (Mobile) | Nintendo Life

While fans of Nintendo’s enchanting Real-Time Strategy series patiently await the next long-rumored main entry, Niantic has offered a new mobile Pikmin experience to pass the time, an app that looks suspiciously similar to the project. Former company involving Nintendo (or a Nintendo-aligned property, at least). 2016’s Pokémon GO became a global phenomenon and a huge source of revenue for all parties involved, so you’ll be forgiven for thinking the creators have similar ambitions this time around. Just looking at the screens of this latest collaboration, which similarly uses Google mapping technology to create a game of the world around you, it certainly looks like ‘another’ Pokémon GO. However, Pikmin Bloom is a very different beast; an app that’s more of a “pedometer with benefits” than an all-encompassing time sink, but one we’ve enjoyed our time with.

It’s best to set expectations up front. Unsurprisingly, Bloom won’t satisfy fans wanting Pikmin 4, and despite the underlying mechanics and systems, it’s only superficially similar to GO. Niantic’s conquering sister title has grown and expanded almost beyond recognition since its launch, of course, but while Pikmin Bloom encourages you to go out and sow seeds or make giant Poké Stop-style flowers bloom, the interactions and challenges it contains are much less demanding than catching and training pocket monsters, fighting in gyms, and trading and raiding with friends. It is a much quieter experience by design.

Maybe too quiet for Pokémon GO veterans looking for the same buzz. Pikmin Bloom is more like friendly company on your hike, and the app is perfectly happy to be turned off and left in the background. You won’t miss a gym or a rare catch here, and your Pikmin friends will collect everything you pass.

The basic circuit is as follows: you walk through your neighborhood with a small but ever-growing (!) Band of Pikmin friends who collect fruits and items as you wander. By touching the fruit, it is distilled into nectar of different varieties, depending on the color, which is fed to your Pikmin (up to six times a day) causing the flowers on their heads to bloom. Tapping the petals adds to your inventory and can be used to start a limited-time flower planting binge that leaves a beautiful colorful trail wherever you walk before the supply of those petals runs out.

Rarer fruit distilled petals are different colors with faster plant rates, and the flora trail they leave behind, which remains visible on your map, is more than just decorative. Planting flowers around giant leaves – Poké Stops, essentially – causes them to sprout and eventually bloom, providing more fruit to collect. Which creates more nectar and petals, and more beautification as you continue your march through the city scattering flowers and decorations as the numbers increase with each step.

You can choose to make your flower paths visible to everyone, although being the only player in our neighborhood, this social aspect has not influenced our time with the game during the launch period. In fact, we had to take a detour several times and walk around giant buds to plant the required 300 flowers and watch them bloom, something that should happen much more frequently once more people are playing and planting their own trails. There’s a Friends tab to add your friends and planting flowers with others will give the experience a whole new social look, if that’s what you’re looking for. If not, the game works perfectly as a solo experience.

As in Pokémon GO, meeting certain criteria will allow you to level up, expand your squad, and offer special slots for single-use seeders and other items that will help you grow your army even more. Pikmin are grown by planting seedlings in the slots (there are always two available, with room for four more single-use pots) and filling in a step counter as you would with eggs in Pokémon GO. Normal Red, Blue, and Yellow Pikmin take 1,000 steps to grow, Purple Pikmin 3,000, Extra Large Seedlings 10,000, and so on. You have the option to name each Pikmin, although it is a bit laborious. Each one has an expandable friendship level (if you are friendly enough, they may bring you a decoration related gift) and their place of “birth” is registered, so it is good to give them all the names if you wish. . However, we soon tire of the hectic entry work, so the only named members of our squad are our trusty red Pikmin duo Tony and Hopkins.

A special detector item can be used once a day (or you can pay 100 coins to quickly charge for another use) to find nearby items for Pikmin to retrieve via Expeditions, and they can even bring postcards from the area they have. visited. There are ‘achievement’ badges to collect and special decorative Pikmin with hats and costumes. Everything is lovely company on your daily walk.

The game will also leave daily notes when you are not walking, letting you know how yesterday was or what the weather will be like today. A large part of the game involves your Lifelog, a calendar-style summary of the steps you’ve taken, an overview of the flowers planted, and an attached screenshot chosen from your camera roll, which could be a treasured keepsake or any other. gif you downloaded that day for lols. It’s another factor that makes this a much more enjoyable experience than Pokémon, and that it integrates into your routine rather than taking control.

In terms of monetization, anyone who has played GO will find the Pikmin Bloom Shop very familiar, although without the ability to fight in gyms, we were earning coins at a very slow rate. The Store has limited-time packs available along with all the resources that you find or generate naturally through the game, plus special faster-growing slots, storage upgrades, all acquirable with coins. We don’t feel the need to spend money during the launch period, although that may change as our military grows in the weeks and months to come. There is nothing egregious here to worry about if you are suspicious of Niantic making you money; everything is very relaxed and civilized; shows that this comes from a company that would certainly like your money, but absolutely not need to keep the lights on.

The Augmented Reality mode (optional) here also fits in a bit better with the Pikmin universe, with the little cocoons running around whatever surface your phone detects once you activate it. You can turn on a light, which dims the screen and also activates your phone’s flashlight, to draw them where the phone is pointing. It’s a bit of fun aside from that it put us in mind of 3DS AR cards. You won’t lose much if you never use it, but it’s cute nonetheless. The app’s audio is just as lovely, with the little ditty that plays when you activate the flower plant and jump down the street being a particular ear worm. The little howls of your Pikmin, and the satisfying ‘pop’ when you pull a fully grown one out of its growing slot, are as endearing as they ever were in the main games.

All of these elements are combined into one package that, while far from being essential, is worth checking out for the entry fee of exactly zero Hungarian dollars / pounds / euros / food vouchers. As we said in our first-look feature, what’s most surprising about the game is how laid-back it is: Niantic’s confidence in the core experience so you can get on with your day without constantly pressing and pushing to touch the screen. without thinking or incorporating a myriad of digital tasks into your hectic schedule. In an environment where so many games are fighting for your time and digging their hooks the best they can to extract maximum commitment and seed the FOMO whenever they get the chance, Pikmin Bloom is refreshingly easygoing.

And we have to say that we appreciate it very much. The game is very likely to evolve in the coming months, as much as Pokémon GO has changed a lot since its launch, and perhaps that will generate more momentum to spend money. However, as it stands at the time of writing, Pikmin Bloom is one of the easiest free games to play we’ve ever played. Obviously, Niantic has solved many problems through experimentation and experience with Pokémon GO, and it is impressive to see that the same technology produces an experience that has such a different and more relaxing tone despite the superficial similarities.

conclusion

Pikmin Bloom is much more an application that accompanies life than something to devour feverishly as long as the battery allows it; It feels like a much more “ healthy ” experience for the body and mind than many free games, and Niantic serves its goals well. . Time will tell if it has something like the staying power and pull of Pokémon GO, but where that game can seem like an insurmountable climb if you leave it for a period of time, with no hope of catching them all, Pikmin. Bloom is more of an old friend that you haven’t seen in years, but you just pick up where you left off. Fire it up with the right expectations, and you’ll likely have a great time with it.