Pikmin Bloom is Google and Nintendo’s latest Pokémon style game. It was hard to miss in early November 2021 as there was a wave of advertisements on every channel. After seeing some early news I thought it was worth seeing what all the hype was about.

Game Overview

The mechanics are fairly simple. You collect cute little characters call Pikmin. The higher your level the more you can have and the broader the types.

To gain new Pikmin you are sending your existing Pikmin out on missions to collect eggs or being gifrted eggs as you level up. To hatch an eggs you need to walk. (Getting Pokémon vibes here right?)

Pikmin also fall in love with you over time as you send them on missions to collect eggs, nectar or to destroy mushrooms. Once they reach four hearts they can level up and add some bling… Like a macaroon.

Walking is a little bit of a community affair as you can plant seedlings on your walk. Those flowers are gained by feeding the Pikmin nectar which is a very Pokémon like mechanic of throwing it to them. The community aspect comes in as your can see the flowers that everyone else has planted. There are larger flowers located at points of interest along the way and if enough people plant flowers near the points of interest they will bloom.

The other community aspect is destroying mushrooms – if you see a mushroom is being destroyed by someone else then you can jump in to help. Up to five people can join to destroy a mushroom and the faster it is destroyed the higher the stars you can get – so there’s benefits to working as a team.

Most of the game is based around walking. You level up mostly by walking. You have planters to unlock Pikmin and they are operated by walking. Higher level Pikmin require more steps. The more you walk the more seedlings you can plant. And the good thing is that most of the activity can happen in the background – you don’t even need to have the app open for it to be operating.

So it all seems pretty harmless right? What about this could make me want to quit Pikmin Bloom after only 10 days?

Here’s my main three reasons:

I Already Like Walking

And the game takes away from it. I might be a bit unique here in that I intriscinly like walking an exercise. The app started tying my exercise to its goals which is concerning for me.

For people who don’t love walking and need an external push the game is probably excellent.

Even for me I found myself walking additional steps in the first week to achieve some of the goals or grow a new Pikmin.

The Game Is Distracting

Sometimes I walk to have a clear head. Other times I’m doing something productive like learning Mandarin.

The game takes away from both as you constantly want to check what’s going on. While I mentioned that the game works just fine in the background the reality is that you are checking for missions, you have enough nectar, if a how many more steps to grow a new Pikmin, and feeding your Pikmin.

And it’s the feeding of Pikmin that’s really mindless. The mechanism is just as draining as trying to catch a Pokémon except without the skill.

The Community Features Aren’t Community

Privacy is important and I don’t know how to balance this but I wish the app helped me interact with my neighbours and the community. Instead we’re all just walking around together alone.

Maybe later versions would evolve that. To get over my first two negative aspects I needed something stronger and it’s nowhere close.