Peridot Is The Next Generation Chao Garden Of Your Dreams
During the Summer Game Fest Play Days event in Los Angeles last weekend, I got a quick look at Niantic’s new AR-powered mobile game, Peridot. While at first it may look like Niantic’s attempt to create its own version of Pokemon, Peridot is actually a lot closer to a pet simulator like Nintendogs or Tamagotchi. Ironically, Peridot’s core gameplay loop involves raising and breeding creatures - a feature that the core Pokemon series is known for, but hasn’t yet made its way into Pokemon Go. While my hands-on time was brief, I was impressed by the augmented reality features, which far exceed the interactions that are possible in Pokemon Go today.
The Peridots, called Dots, are outrageously cute. Their giant Beanie Baby eyes and amorphous squish mallow bodies give even the most adorable Pokemon a run for their money. I’m almost disgusted by how precious these things are, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a massive merchandising push once the game goes live, considering how much variety there is to the kinds of Dots you can create.
Unlike Pokemon, Peridot doesn’t feature a collection of bespoke, hand-made creatures to collect. Instead, each Dot has a certain number of physical characteristics that will reveal themselves as the creature matures. You can kind of think of Dots like Chaos from the Sonic Adventure series, both in terms of their physical features and the way you pass those features down through breeding. Some features are more rare or unique than others, and finding those characteristics to breed into your Dots is a huge part of the game’s social and fitness angles. Niantic specifically mentioned a unicorn horn as one example of a rare characteristic that players may want their Dots to acquire through breeding,
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