Pikmin 4 embraces the series’ hidden horror roots

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By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

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If you haven’t played a Pikmin game before, you might be surprised to learn that the series can get quite dark. Sure, it stars a bunch of adorable plant-like beings — the titular pikmin — who navigate a huge world full of similarly cute creatures. It’s bright and colorful in the way that Nintendo games tend to be. But it’s also pretty creepy at times, with unsettling enemies to go up against, dark caverns to explore, and the way the pikmin will throw themselves into battle, with hordes able to overwhelm and kill larger creatures, whose corpses they then cart off to be repurposed. Pikmin is light on the surface but darker the more you think about it — and the latest entry takes things a step further with a survival mode and some ghostly new pikmin that only come out at night.

At its core, Pikmin 4 isn’t all that different than its predecessors. It’s still a mix between a puzzle / adventure game and an RTS, where you command groups of little pikmin to explore areas and complete missions. In this game, it’s a rescue mission — or, rather, a number of them. First, series staple Captain Olimar gets lost on an Earth-like planet, and then the rescue team that sets out to save him gets similarly stuck. You play as a new recruit — for the first time in the series, you can make your own character — who first has to rescue the rescuers and then the captain himself.

You do this, as always, with the help of pikmin. Basically, the world of these games is like a