Is Pikmin Bloom celebrating Pikmin 4? “It’s a top secret situation!”

Pikmin Bloom first blossomed a year and a half ago as an encouraging spin-off of the eco-friendly franchise created by Shigeru Miyamoto. Now, with the fourth major installment in the series about to be released exclusively on Nintendo Switch, we caught up with the team at Niantic Tokyo to find out more about the mobile game’s latest feature… the potential and inevitable Pikmin 4 content.

“It’s a top secret situation!” Chief Product Officer Tomo Yamazaki laughs when asked about the events celebrating the impending arrival of Pikmin 4. “Of course we are thinking of something, but at the moment we can’t say the details, so please stay tuned. We think it will make the fans enjoy it.”

With or without Pikmin 4, Pikmin Bloom has grown and seen new features sprout from the original walking concept.

“Our core gameplay hasn’t changed because it’s the foundation of our concept,” explains Rika Nakajima, Senior Product Manager. “But we’re working hard on new features to add more social elements that keep people more connected.”

Regarding these new features, “One example is that we just held the first real Niantic-like event in Sapporo in Japan. This is a collaboration between both the local government and Nintendo. So when users go to Sapporo, users can see some points of interest of flowers, and some landmarks or points of interest, and people can get very nice seedlings for their decorated Pikmin.”

“They play a lot with postcards,” adds UX designer Akari Sora. “They enjoyed it…we have a banana Pikmin, but it split a little bit in three, but they tried to take a postcard picture with the connected Pikmin. They keep surprising us with new ways to enjoy the game. Enjoy.”

But aside from the actual venue-themed cosmetics and events, there are some more sophisticated suggestions for those looking for them:

“We gave the mushroom challenge,” Yamazaki-san says in the video. “The challenge for mushrooms is for the humans to get the Pikmin to fight the fungus. Then the five humans can basically do that.” [in het team] Compete against each other. We made a new red layer of mushrooms. Only humans can get red Pikmins. Also, these are very rare, which is why they are very popular. It is very difficult for us to find uninhabited mushrooms. Then we introduced new features, [zoals] Mushroom ticket. Then people with a mushroom ticket can participate, even if the mushroom itself is busy.”

For more information on the incredibly delicious Donut Pikmin, the Skateboard Pikmin, and other aspects of the Pikmin Bloom, watch the full video above. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get away with our awesome Pikmin team jerseys…