Niantic reveals its new virtual pet game, Peridot
After finding success with the launch of Pokémon Go, the mobile augmented reality game’s developer, Niantic, is creating an original digital pet of its own. On Wednesday, Niantic announced Peridot, a new game coming to mobile devices that focuses less on catching ’em all and more on caring for, raising, and breeding unique digital creatures.
In Peridot, players will raise magical beasts called Peridots “that feel real,” Ziah Fogel, the game’s senior producer, said during a press briefing earlier this week. Each Peridot is “100% unique and 100% yours,” Niantic says, differing in visual appearance, personality, their likes and dislikes, and their abilities. Players will raise Peridots from birth into adulthood, breed them with other Peridots at nests, and create multiple generations of their virtual pets, leading to new discoveries.
As seen in the game’s teaser trailer above, Peridots come in a variety of shapes, sizes, colors, and patterns. They’ll follow real-world archetypes in their designs, which Niantic says are a mix of hand-created assets and procedural generation; some Peridots will share traits inspired by unicorns or peacocks, while others will look like rabbits or clownfish. Other, less literal Peridot archetypes revealed include concepts like glitter, jester, metallic, and kintsugi (the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery). Peridots will breed with others and, using a system patterned after real-world DNA, birth new breeds of Peridot.
Like Pokémon Go, Ingress, Pikmin Bloom, and other Niantic augmented reality games, Peridot will place a strong emphasis on walking around and exploring new places in the real world. Daily care of your Peridot is also crucial to its happiness and survival. Players will need
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