Pikmin Bloom is an exercise-focused mobile game where the primary goal is to collect decor for each unit by finding Seedlings at various real-world locations. The number of new decor types introduced by Niantic has increased significantly over the last few months with additions like "Snack," "Sushi Restaurant," and "Tiny Book" designations, as well as the stand-out train station "Ticket" decor. Another unique new kind of decor was added on June 12: "Leaf Hat" Pikmin.
Most of the decor introduced for Pikmin Bloom thus far is tied to a location or time; the aforementioned Pikmin found at train stations or sushi restaurants being examples of the prior, with holidays like Lunar New Year introducing limited "Special" decor throughout the year. Leaf Hats are different, as they are tied to rainy weather conditions regardless of one's location. It's good to see Niantic get more creative with the kind of content introduced in Pikmin Bloom, but the idea of Pikmin shielding themselves from the weather could also make an interesting mechanic in the next mainline title.
How Leaf Hats Fit in Pikmin Bloom
The new Leaf Hat decor is among the most limited in Niantic's mobile game. Most decor types have a variant for all seven kinds of Pikmin (Red, Blue, Yellow, White, Purple, Rock, and Flying), though a handful can only be worn by specific colors. This has been the case for holidays like Lunar New Year, but even permanent additions like Sushi Restaurant only apply to Red, Blue, and Yellow Pikmin. Rainy weather decor can only be worn by Blue Pikmin (similar to the Mario cap given away at launch), hearkening back to the color's water resistance according to a Niantic blog post.
That being said, variants of the Leaf Hat exist, so there is reason to collect more than one. In a promotional image fans can see one Pikmin wearing a leaf in the shape of straw hat with a brim, meanwhile another looks to have a lily pad around its sprout. For Pikmin Bloom, introducing regular decor not tied to location has a lot of potential, whether it be more weather-based outfits for conditions like snow or something better. Yet the concept could travel much further.
Pikmin Preparing For a Rainy Day
Throughout each mainline entry in the Pikmin franchise, players take control of miniscule interplanetary explorers who discover planet Earth; covered in ruins left by an absent humanity. The first two titles follow Captain Olimar from Hocotate, who first crash-lands on Earth and has to repair his ship, before returning with an assistant named Louie to collect treasures that wipe out their company's debts. Pikmin 3 shifts focus to the fruitarian Captains Alph, Brittany, and Charlie, who travel to what they call PNF-404 in order to bring seeds back for their dying home.
As these adventures take place on Earth, the Hocotatians and Koppaites have to use their army of Pikmin to deal with environmental hazards as often as they battle comparatively massive bugs. Yet weather conditions like rain in Pikmin 3's Garden of Hope are never anything more than an aesthetic change, despite providing context for Pikmin boss conditions like the muddy battlefield on which Quaggled Mireclops is fought.
Nintendo could take inspiration from a game like The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap and turn torrential rainstorms into a Pikmin 4 hazard with huge raindrops that damage non-Blue Pikmin. After all, other colors drown in bodies of water and can be killed by bubbles from Watery Blowhogs. In this case, players would have to adapt to a new plan for unexpected days in the real-time strategy game, perhaps bringing some Blue Pikmin into the wild so that they can collect Leaf Hats inspired by Pikmin Bloom. It remains to be seen whether deadly weather would offer a fun, balanced gameplay mechanic, but it could add a lot to the series' sense of realism - for whatever that's worth in a series about inch-high spacemen.
Pikmin Bloom is available now on Android and iOS devices.