Niantic’s new AR experiment is a ho-hum Pikmin mobile browser game

theverge.com:

By Wes Davis, a weekend editor who covers the latest in tech and entertainment. He has written news, reviews, and more as a tech journalist since 2020.

Niantic has a new Pikmin AR experiment for your mobile browser, called Pikmin Finder, that lets you pluck pikmin from any old place and send them off to collect treasure for you (via Nintendo Life). It’s basically a cute, distilled version of 2021’s Pikmin Bloom, and unless you’re just hopelessly charmed by Shigeru Miyamoto’s imaginary garden creatures, it’s only good for a couple minutes of diversion. And the only official acknowledgment that it exists appears to be a support article.

Niantic has had trouble lately, so it’s not a surprise this was released so quietly. Between summer layoffs, a studio closure, and a lawsuit alleging internal sexual bias, the beleaguered company hasn’t put its best foot forward lately. Niantic has a lot riding on its upcoming AR game Monster Hunter Now, but even if that game is a hit that’s not Pokémon Go, the company has issues to reckon with.

Pikmin Finder clearly isn’t meant to be part of that reckoning — it’s a simple AR toy meant to wet your whistle for the excellent Pikmin 4 (see the ad that shows up when you look at the treasures you’ve collected).

You start by pointing your phone’s camera at a surface, look around for the telltale pikmin stalk poking up from the ground, and swipe up near it to pluck the li’l fella. Once you’ve found all of the two or three nearby pikmin, you can tap a button to send them marching off-screen to find some treasure, which they’ll return to present you with a few minutes later. And that’s it. That’s the game.

Somehow, even as a digital AR game equivalent of a fidget spinner, the Pikmin Finder experime