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Pikmin 4 is real.
OK, that’s not all we know. We’ve rounded up all the interesting information we have about the upcoming sequel to the popular Nintendo strategy game, a title we first heard about a long, long time ago.
There is none all lots of info so check back for more trailers and screenshots trickling out of the Pikmin newspipe…
Pikmin 4 Details, Pictures, Trailers and MORE
The story so far
A long, long time ago in 2015, Shigeru Miyamoto gave an interview where he said that the Pikmin 3 sequel was “actually very close to completion” and that “Pikmin teams always work closest”. Eurogamer followed up on this interview and asked Nintendo if this was true, to which they replied:
“We can confirm that Pikmin 4 is in development, but that’s all we can confirm at this time.”
2015 was the Wii U era, and the Nintendo Switch wasn’t released until March 2017, but the Switch – then still codenamed NX – was in development. Still, Pikmin 4 hasn’t been confirmed for any particular platform.
Now it’s easy to assume that the Pikmin Miyamoto and Nintendo were talking about was Pikmin Bloom released in 2021, or even Hey! Pikmin released on 3DS in 2017. But apparently that wasn’t the case. We have a timeline of Pikmin 4 related events for you here…
- June 2017: Don’t worry, Pikmin 4 “still progressing”
- Miyamoto now says he was “told by PR not to share about it”… “but I can tell you it’s progressing.” This also confirms that Hey! Pikmin is not the fabled Pikmin 4, since the 3DS offshoot was already announced at that point. everything ok
What is Pikmin?
Pikmin is a series of games in which you play a kind of stranded or exploring astronaut who teams up with wild onion creatures called “Pikmin” to navigate the wilderness. You have to avoid or defeat monsters, collect treasures, food and ship parts and above all protect Pikmin.
Pikmin are frail, silly little things, but they do listen to orders, so it’s your job to contain them in a way that they don’t drown, burn, fall from things, get eaten, or succumb to a variety of threats – you’ll know when you’re done with a bad job if you do this one hear the tragic little sigh of a Pikmin becoming a ghost. And you will hear it. A lot of.
Hopefully, if you continue to tend to them and increase their numbers by bringing dead beasts and Pikmin food back to their onion houses, you’ll be able to get the best endings – each game has multiple ways your story can be completed, depending on how much of it the game you could beat in the allotted time limit.
It really is – grow Pikmin, command Pikmin to get things, craft more Pikmin, repeat.
follower
The above trailer is from the September 2022 Nintendo Direct – which was rumored to be a “Zelda blowout” that also gave us the release date for the Breath of the Wild sequel, as well as a title – Tears of the Kingdom.
Pikmin 4 was a bit of an outlier, and was announced in a weird segment presented by Miyamoto, in which he updated us on the Super Mario movie, the Super Mario theme park, the, ahem, continued existence of Pikmin Bloom, and gave us the littlest thing greasy a look at Pikmin 4 in a trailer that basically told us nothing.
After 7 years very little, we take it.
Pikmin 4 release date
2023
We would hazard a guess later a year, considering how little we know about it. Probably a few months after Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom released in May.
playing style
Well… the trailer doesn’t give us much clue. It looks like it’s taking place in a garden, with a giant garden bench, raised flower beds, and human objects like a broken pocket watch.
PNF-404 – the planet where Pikmin games are set – is said to be an Earth where humans became extinct. But this planet looks pretty neat when Bulborb infested. Could it be the same planet but in a place where the last vestige of humanity still exists?
We only see the original three Pikmin colors, yellow, red, and blue, as well as Bulborbs, the Pikmin series’ goombas, in the trailer, so it’s difficult to find out much about new abilities and enemies.
There’s also a look at our potential new player character:
Miyamoto described the core idea behind Pikmin as “dandori” (“段取り” in Japanese), which means “strategic planning”. With that in mind, he said the team simplified the controls in Pikmin to allow the player to better plan their strategy, rather than feel like they’re always herding cats.
Miyamoto also mentioned the ability to play the game “from the perspective of the Pikmin at ground level,” which seems to mean you can have the camera closer to the ground than overhead.
Check back later – eventually we’ll know more. As long as it’s not another seven years.
screenshots
Um, more like screenshot. Singular. Here it is:
t shirt
We have more information about Shigeru Miyamoto’s Cool Pikmin Shirt than we have about the game! You can buy it at the New York Nintendo Store.
That’s all the information we could squeeze out of the slightly damp sponge of the reveal trailer… but hopefully there’s more to come in the year or so before the game comes out.
Stay tuned for any Pikmin news you might want, and let us know in the comments what features, new ideas, and stories you’d like to see in the finished game.