Tag Archives: Pikmin

Technology

Your Next Great Game Pass Obsession

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Screenshot: Splashteam / Tinybuild / Kotaku

It’s been years since we got news about Pikmin 4, Nintendo’s next entry in the beloved RTS puzzle franchise. But don’t worry. If you’ve been craving some minion management, puzzle solving, cute worlds to explore, and maybe even some platforming, then you should check out Tinykin. And best of all, this excellent Pikmin-like adventure is out now across multiple platforms, including Xbox and PC via Game Pass. No waiting necessary!

Released on August 30, Tinykin is a gorgeous game that mixes vibrant 2D characterswith lavishly-detailed 3D worlds. You play as a young human boy who leaves his home planet in search of humanity’s true origin. He crash lands on Earth inside of an early 90s-era home. However, he’s only an inch or two tall and the house is overrun with smart sentient bugs who worship the home’s missing owner. These bugs need your help. Lucky for you, these odd critters known as Tinykin seem to love you and will follow you around, letting you command them and use their abilities to solve puzzle. You use these powers to help other bugs, of course. And in doing so, maybe you’ll get to figure out why you’re so small and where the owner of this home is.

Tinykins can be found in colored pods which you break open to collect. The various colors represent different flavors of the creatures, and each comes equipped with its own unique ability or skill. For example, red ones can be used as bombs to blow up walls or reveal shortcuts. Green ones can be stacked to create tiny towers that can help you reach new areas and pink ones are very strong, letting you move around large objects or push aside obstacles using your neon-colored friends.

Screenshot: Splashteam / Tinybuild / Kotaku

As you explore and amass a tiny army of Tinykins, the gameplay loop of the game becomes apparent. The game is built around large maps set in different areas of the house. Sprinkled around these rooms are small puzzles and larger side objectives. Some of these are fairly simple, only asking you to head over to an area and use a few of your critters to, say, move a book that’s required to reach another object needed by a bug. Others are more elaborate, forcing you to collect 20 or 30 Tinykin of a specific color to progress. But I never got annoyed by these objectives. In fact, I loved building up a massive army of adorable 2D critters as I searched every nook and cranny for collectibles and more Tinykin to add to my posse.

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While these worlds are fairly large—it will likely take you over an hour to complete one entirely—you don’t have to walk around everywhere. Tinykin features a soapboard that lets you skate around the world and even grind on ziplines and ledges. It also gives you a bubble that allows you to glide to out-of-the-way areas. This aspect of Tinykin is what really made the game click with me. I was already into the mix of 2D/3D art and the huge armies of tiny critters, but the fluidity of movement in the game makes it a breeze to explore each world.

Even without the Tinykin, it’s just fun to run, jump, climb, grind and grind around each level as you meet new bugs and help them with their various problems and quests.

Tinybuild / Splashteam / Xbox

Sadly, I did encounter some frame rate issues in certain parts of each world I played while on the Xbox Series X, which was disappointing. Thankfully, they aren’t too common and seem confined to a few specific spots that you can avoid. Still, I’d love to see a patch in the near future that helps to address these issues as I have to imagine the Series X can more than handle the visual complexity on display in Tinykin.

Tinykin is one of those games that just grabs you and pulls you in and before you know it, you’ve completed an entire world. Based on the main questline involving a half dozen or so key objects, I’m not expecting Tinykin to be some 20-hour adventure. But that’s okay. As this game proves, you can have a lot of fun with tiny things.

Tinykin is out now on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PS5, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC. On Xbox, Steam and Switch you can download and play a free demo before buying the full game.

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Technology

Pokémon Go Studio Lays Off Staff And Cancels Projects

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Photo: Rafael Henrique / SOPA Images / LightRocket (Getty Images)

The mobile game company behind Pokémon Go, Niantic, is struggling to find its next big hit. And now, a new report claims the studio canceled multiple projects and laid off staff members in an effort to “streamline” operations.

The San Francisco-based publisher cut 85 to 90 jobs and canceled four in-development games, including a Transformers spin-off announced last year called Heavy Metal, according to a Bloomberg report published today, Bloomberg further reported that an email was sent from CEO John Hanke to staff that said the company was “facing a time of economic turmoil” and that after previous efforts to cut costs, Niantic still needed to “further streamline our operations in order to best position the company to weather any economic storms that may lie ahead.”

Other reportedly canceled games include Hamlet, a planned collaboration between Niantic and theatre company Punchdrunk, and Blue Sky and Snowball, but it’s unclear if those were planned titles or internal codenames.

Niantic found big success with 2016’s AR-powered Pokémon Go, but it still hasn’t been able to replicate that success. In 2019, the studio released Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, but it never found a large audience and was eventually shut down earlier this year. Other games based on Pikmin and Catan have also failed to set the world on fire.

Read More: Niantic Mapped The World. Now They’re Mapping You

In a statement sent to Kotaku, a Niantic spokesperson confirmed the news of the layoffs and explained it planned to continue to support Pokémon Go and its other games and projects.

“We recently decided to stop production on some projects and reduce our workforce by about eight percent to focus on our key priorities,” said Niantic. “We are grateful for the contributions of those leaving Niantic, and we are supporting them through this difficult transition.

The company also told Kotaku that this move will allow the company to focus more on “new experiences” and that it will “continue investing in the future of AR.”

While it’s true Niantic will keep investing in new games—the company did just announce a new project with the NBA after all—it’s unlikely that those laid off will find comfort in that fact. I can’t imagine watching your company continue to make billions of dollars on a single game while laying off staff is a good way to boost morale.

  

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Technology

Pikmin Bloom impressions after six months

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For reasons not entirely logical, I still love playing Pikmin Bloom. It’s been almost six months since Niantic’s walking companion app launched, and my routine hasn’t changed much in that time. Every day, I try to get my steps in. I often fail to. I sometimes earn far too many steps by driving with my phone in my pocket. I occasionally go out of town, and have to wait weeks for items I discover there to find their way back to me. But every day, multiple times a day, I check in. I feel like I’m accomplishing something.

I’m not. I’m making numbers go up. And I’m still trying to wrap my head around the appeal of it all, because it runs counter to so much of what I typically like in games.

On a mechanical level, there’s not a lot of game here. You have tasks to do, which occasionally take a hint of strategy to complete. And there are ways to optimize your squad. But generally, it’s about walking. You walk to find seedlings, walk to make them grow, walk to get food to feed them. In a typical game, this would lead to something. Growing more Pikmin would unlock different types of gameplay or new stories to explore. Here, you plant flowers and fight mushrooms, but there’s no challenge to either. You essentially build up your team to keep building your team.

Image: Niantic/Nintendo

A big part of that, I imagine, is Niantic needs to make money, and the more it can get you thinking about the numbers, the more likely you are to spend money to make those numbers move faster. Which is weird in a game built around walking, since you’re essentially cheating yourself, but it’s done responsibly — the game doesn’t hold key features back if you don’t pay, and I have yet to spend (or feel like I need to spend) a dollar on it.

Without the typical challenges I look for in games, I find that a lot of Pikmin Bloom’s appeal comes down to something that sounds pretty boring on paper: it’s satisfying to see new technology working well.

Games set on real-world maps are no longer brand new at this point, but there’s still something fascinating about seeing yourself in two worlds at once, and Niantic’s tech has evolved to the point that it all works smoothly. In this case, you essentially play the role of a post office supervisor, and it remains fun sending Pikmin out and seeing them return, over and over. Even the smaller details, like the way the app uses vibration, feel refined to the point that playing seems like a taste of the potential of what games can be in the future.

I also love the passive collaboration of it all. Unlike Pokémon Go and Ingress, Pikmin Bloom doesn’t feature competitive elements. I recall the developers of Journey talking at one point about removing features that would allow players to negatively impact each other online, and it feels like Niantic took a similar approach here. You can plant flowers alongside other players, and team up with other players to fight mushrooms faster, but the design limits you from doing anything that would ruin someone else’s experience.

It reminds me of Noby Noby Boy or Curiosity: What’s Inside the Cube?, in that you’re all working together towards a shared goal, though I suppose in the latter case that all kind of fell apart (and arguably wasn’t “shared” to begin with).

I do wish all my time spent was leading to something a bit more concrete. Not just items to collect, but things to do. An end game. Yet, as I keep reminding myself, doing so would clash with the idea that this is a companion app for exercise as much, if not more, than it is a game. And perhaps more importantly, it would also, sadly, mean I’d have to stop playing.

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Technology

Pikmin Bloom Is Now Available In The Americas

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Pikmin Bloom is the latest AR mobile release from Niantic that ties in with a prominent Nintendo franchise, following the enormous success of Pokémon GO. It’s evidently designed to be a little more relaxed in its objectives and targets, as it’s focused on making more Pikmin friends and bringing flowers to bloom as opposed to capturing a huge range of Pocket Monsters.

We went hands on with the app earlier this week (below) as it underwent a soft launch in a limited number of countries.

Its roll-out now seems to be picking up pace, with Nintendo confirming that it’s available to download throughout the Americas.

It seems likely that the roll-out will progress fairly quickly, with Nintendo of Europe confirming it’ll arrive in the region ‘soon’.

Let us know if you’re planning to check this out!



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Technology

Pokémon Go developer Niantic releasing new Pikmin AR game, Pikmin Bloom

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Pikmin Bloom, a new augmented reality app from Nintendo and Pokémon Go creator Niantic, is coming to mobile devices starting Tuesday. The new app will be released in Australia and Singapore first, and will roll out globally over the coming days on Apple’s App Store and the Google Play Store, according to a news release. It will be available to download for free.

“For both me and everyone at Niantic, helping this app take shape has been a new experience and lots of fun,” Shigeru Miyamoto said in a new trailer for the game. “My hope is that everyone will be able to create lasting memories together with Pikmin.“

The app uses real-world augmented reality (AR) technology to bring the colorful insect-like mascots called Pikmin to your daily walk. By doing this, it aims to “spice up” banal commutes like going to the park or to the grocery store by allowing you to interact with your Pikmin.

The mainline Pikmin games for consoles are a series of strategy games where you grow and command groups of Pikmin as if they were an army. This app takes a more peaceful approach and doesn’t involve fighting other creatures. In Pikmin Bloom, you plant Pikmin, which grow automatically as you walk, then you pluck them. The more you walk, the more Pikmin friends you can make.

Image: Niantic/Nintendo

Walking with your Pikmin also leaves a trail of blooming flowers and gives your Pikmin the chance to collect items. There are no new Pikmin in this game, but they will collect outfits that they can wear. As they collect specific items like fruit, you can use it to feed your Pikmin. Feeding them will then cause flowers to bloom on their heads that you can use to plant even more flowers on your walk — allowing you and others to plant virtual gardens all throughout your city.

Even though you can team up with other trainers in Pokémon Go, that app is still a competitive game where you fight to take gyms for your team. Pikmin Blooms won’t have you picking any teams and aims to be more collaborative. Throughout the game, you plant gardens with others and take on challenges with players that will help you win rewards.

Image: Niantic/Nintendo

Pikmin Bloom is trying to be more about celebrating mundane memories. A key part of the game will be a journal that allows you to reflect on your day. So each day, the app will allow you to count your steps and will generate a journal entry that gives you the option to add photos and create a little entry.

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