Pik pocket

Nintendo and Niantic’s latest AR team-up is a delightfully unassuming diversion. Is that enough?

Shortly after soft-launching in other territories, Niantic’s newest location-based AR mobile game arrived in the UK on November 2. On the same day, the company announced that it would be shutting down another location-based AR mobile game, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite, by the end of January. That ruthless swing of the axe would appear to be an ominous sign for what, with the best will in the world, is a significantly lesser-known series – even with the backing of Nintendo. Then again, while the threat of underperformance-related closure might loom over the Pikmin like a hungry Bulborb, you sense that expectations for Bloom will be a little more modest.

At the very least, it’s unlikely anyone at Niantic will be quite so bullish about its prospects as the employee who said of Harry Potter, as journalist Imran Khan recalled on Twitter: “We are absolutely confident this will be far bigger than Pokémon Go.” Playing Pikmin Bloom, it’s clear almost immediately that Niantic isn’t looking to supplant its most successful game, but to supplement it. Indeed, at times this seems to have been built with that purpose at front of mind: boot up Bloom before Go and you can quietly make progress in the background while out hunting for Pokémon or battling gyms.