Pikmin 4 is coming in 2023 and it’ll let you play from a Pikmin’s perspective

Pikmin 4 will come to Nintendo Switch sometime in 2023, one decade after the last game in the series. This news comes by way of the September 2022 Nintendo Direct. While it’s unknown when the game will launch or what all of its new features will be, we do know the game will include a new camera perspective. Nintendo released a very short, 34-second teaser trailer for the new game showing off the gorgeous environment, along with the deadly Bulborb, and of course, the lovable Pikmin. It’s unclear if this new entry will feature new Pikmin types, or which new planets you’ll get to visit, but Nintendo will surely show off more before its release. The game’s new perspective allows you to play from the Pikmin’s point of view, which is a first for the series. It’s likely the game will still play like the previous installments, with an emphasis on commanding the Pikmin around large, colorful planets. Interestingly, in 2015, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto told Eurogamer that Pikmin 4 was in development and nearly finished. “We can confirm that Pikmin 4 is in development but that is all we can confirm at present,” Miyamoto said. “It’s actually very close to completion. Pikmin teams are always working on the next one.” However, it seems that its development was rebooted in 2019 or so, according to insider Emily Rogers. Evidently, the game suffered from development issues at the time, not unlike Metroid Prime 4, which also restarted development in 2019. The previous game, Pikmin 3, launched for the Wii U in 2013, so by the time the next entry releases, it will have been a decade between installments. One of Nintendo’s lesser-known yet still beloved franchises is Metroid — a series that originally began on the NES, putting us in the shoes of bounty hunter Samus Aran. Now, over 35 years later, fans are eagerly awaiting the next entry in the series, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which has been in the works for several years. The Prime series takes the formula introduced in the 2D games and turns it into a 3D, first-person adventure that still very much feels like Metroid, despite the perspective shift. Hype for the next installment in the series has found new life now that the original Metroid Prime is available to play on the Nintendo Switch. While there a lot we don’t know about Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, there are plenty of details we can dig into before release. Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is confirmed to be an upcoming Switch game, but it is also an upcoming Switch 2 game alongside Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza. We’ve scoured as much as we could find to bring you everything we know about Metroid Prime 4.
This has been a particularly great year for puzzle games. Lorelei and the Laser Eyes and the recent remake of Riven offer up some mind-bending puzzles to solve, while games like Isles of Sea and Sky and Mars After Midnight find an innovative gameplay conceit and explore the concept to its fullest. The latter type of puzzle game I described tends to be more appealing to me, and a new game launching this week checked off all the right boxes for me. Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure from developer Furniture & Mattress is coming to PC, PlayStation, and Switch on July 25, but you can play it on mobile at no extra charge if you’re a Netflix subscriber. Arranger is a grid-based puzzle game where the world is made up of tiles, and players slide them around as they move. It’s one of those genius gameplay concepts that has existed in bits and pieces in other games, but has never been explored to its fullest like this before. Arranger does just that while telling a coming-of-age story that emotionally ties back into that gameplay mechanic. It’s my favorite puzzle game in a year that has already been outstanding for the genre, and a must-play for fans of the genre.
Arranger creates the perfect setup for a game where players must arrange and move tiles. It’s a coming-of-age story about a girl named Jemma who was abandoned and left to grow up in a village when she was younger. Unlike the people around her, she can see and move the world, which is split up into floor tiles. That causes issues. Everyone in her hometown seems to want her to leave, and she does so after accidentally awakening some static, a mysterious, controlling substance, in a cave right outside of town. Throughout Arranger, Jemma explores the outside world and learns more about her origins and why this static has overtaken the world. Pikmin might be one of the most underrated Nintendo series because the note it tries to hit is so specific. Its charming visual style and cute alien antics need to excite casual Switch players while not turning off strategy game experts, while the actual puzzles in the game need to be challenging enough for advanced players, but solvable for players who just want to pluck little colorful dudes out of the ground and ride an alien dog. It’s quite the balancing act and Pikmin 4 absolutely nails it. If you haven’t jumped into the world of Pikmin before, Pikmin 4 is one of the series’ strongest entries — it captures the charm of the previous installments while rebalancing the game’s sometimes frustrating control scheme and rewriting the story a bit to make it easier to follow for new players.