February's Nintendo Direct was filled to the brim with great reveals, but there's one in particular that has kept my attention ever since.
Sure, Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom looks phenomenal, and it’s a given that it’s going to be among the best games of 2023. But there's another Nintendo title on the way this year that I feel will probably be right up there alongside Zelda. That game is Pikmin 4, shown off at February's Nintendo Direct, and the long-awaited continuation of one of Nintendo's weirdest series.
Pikmin is one of Nintendo’s lesser-known IPs. It’s the brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto – the creator of Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong, and many more. The series debuted on GameCube back in 2001, and was a moderate success. For whatever reason, it's has been subject to long waits between entries; there was a nine year gap between 2004's Pikmin 2 and 2013's Pikmin 3; and now here we are, 10 years later in 2023, with Pikmin slated for release.
The last decade hasn't been completely devoid of Pikmin – 2020's Pikmin 3 Deluxe port on Nintendo Switch included a slew of new content. There was also the terrible Hey Pikmin! spinoff (the less said about that, the better), Pikmin Bloom on mobile, and the surprisingly good Pikmin shorts.
Thankfully Miyamoto seems to have a soft spot for the series, with Pikmin showing up in places like the Wii U file transfer screen, a cameo in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and peppered around Super Nintendo World at Universal Studios Japan. So even though the games aren’t the biggest sellers, those lil plant dudes are always due for a return.
Pik of the litter
First off, let me preface this by saying I understand why Pikmin 4 probably won’t end up being the biggest game of the year, or even be nominated at mainstream awards shows like The Game Awards. We've already had huge titles like the Resident Evil 4 remake this year, while games like Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Final Fantasy 16, and Street Fighter 6 are all coming out in the first half of the year. If that wasn't enough, titles like Starfield, Alan Wake 2, and Armored Core 6 are all set to arrive later this year too. It’s going to be hard for anyone to stand out. But I’m telling you now, you’ll be missing out if you sleep on Pikmin 4 this July.
Considering that the first three entries were released on Nintendo’s two least-successful consoles (no, we don’t count the Virtual Boy), it’s maybe safe to assume that some of you have never played this wonderful series. Pikmin is part puzzle game, part real-time-strategy in which you play as space adventurers who explore the planet PNF-404 and employ the help of Pikmin – little plant creatures native to the planet, who help you collect items and navigate the terrain so that you can escape the planet (or get out of debt in the case of Pikmin 2). Each of the three main titles in the series blend fantastic gameplay with mountains of charm to create one of Nintendo’s most unique IPs.
So what makes Pikmin 4 so special? As a longtime fan of the series, Pikmin 4 looks to be doing everything right. I’m excited to see a return to being a solo adventurer. Pikmin 2 had you control Olimar and Louie, each having their own band of Pikmin to control, then Pikmin 3 – as the name implies – bumped the number up to three adventurers. While I don’t think multiple characters is a bad thing – Pikmin 3 is my favourite game in the series, after all – I’m excited to go back to working solo.
One of the most exciting things in the trailer is that caves of Pikmin 2 seem to be making their return. Caves are Pikmin’s equivalent to dungeons, in which you explore randomly generated sublevels to find extra loot and fight tough bosses. There also seems to be some sort of party system. The trailer shows our unnamed protagonist coming across castaway explorers in caves. You can see other adventurers hanging around the ship landing area – perhaps there's a base-building subgame, or even an idle game where you can send other explorers out to gather supplies and Pikmin.
The trailer ends with a hint of nighttime exploration making its debut in the series, so there's even more things we can speculate on. Hopefully a deep dive into the game will air in the coming months, and possibly reveal even more gameplay improvements.
Also, Pikmin 4 it looks lovely. Obviously, the Nintendo Switch won’t be pumping out PS5-calibre graphics, but the trailers make it look primed to be one of the best looking games on the system thanks to 3its blend of photorealism and stylistic graphic styles. The camera has also been changed from the typical overhead view seen in the games before to a ground-level view that really establishes a sense of scale rarely felt in previous entries.
If you couldn’t tell, I’m very excited for Pikmin 4. Hopefully you are too now. I’m not saying it’ll be the best game ever made and blow Zelda out of the water. But if Pikmin 4 manages to improve on Pikmin 3, it will be up there as one of the best games of 2023, and probably one of the most overlooked, just like Pikmin 3 was in 2013.
Also, yeah, there's a dog in it now and that’s pretty sick.
