Pikmin Bloom

Pikmin Bloom is a mobile game from Niantic and Nintendo, the same companies that make Pokemon Go.

Walking

In Pikmin Bloom, the Pikmin walking with you find more Pikmin seedlings and Pikmin food (fruits). You can then put the seedlings in your backpack, and walk to grow them into more Pikmin to join your squad. The steps also contribute towards levelling your character up, and levels unlock things like more types of Pikmin, the ability to have more Pikmin actively walking with you, and the ability to send more Pikmin on expeditions. This article has a list of level requirements and rewards. I'm currently on level 29, so I'll keep track of the data for the next 30 levels. You can plant flowers as you walk, which makes the map pretty and makes your steps go further in growing your seedlings while you've actively walking and planting. There are big flowers around the world which bloom when enough little flowers (from everyone) are planted around them. I don't care much about these.

The game has encouraged me to walk more. For example, right now, I'm about 5000 steps from the next level, and I have a few Pikmin seedlings I want to grow. I'm considering going on a 20 minute walk (about 2000 steps) because 20 minutes really isn't very long but it'll hatch a few Pikmin and get me a good way towards that next level. This happens a lot, squeezing in little walks to just get to the next small goal.

Pikmin and Affection

There are seven types of Pikmin, all of which are unlocked by level 19. They are Red, Yellow, Blue, White, Purple, Rock, and Winged.

Your Pikmin gain affection from being fed nectar from fruit, and from being sent on expeditions. There might also be other ways I don't know about. Their affection level is represented by hearts. When they reach four hearts, which is the maximum, they gain a special expedition. That Pikmin will return to the place of their birth (hope you didn't get on a flight since then) and pick up a present. That present will be an accessory, also called 'décor'. The specific type of décor depends on the environment where the Pikmin was born (hatched? seeded?), which I'll discuss more below.

You're allowed to name your Pikmin, no one can stop you. I have nearly 200 and have now begun naming them random collections of syllables.

Squad

Your 'squad' are the Pikmin who are actively walking with you. They collect fruit and seedlings while you walk. I'm not sure if there are any other benefits. I've not noticed Pikmin gaining affection from walking with me, which is a little bit insulting. The number of Pikmin you can have walking with you increases as you level up.

The Squad

Your squad are the specific Pikmin you can feed with nectar. When you feed them, you can pluck flower petals from them and these are the petals that you can plant as flowers when walking.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what the game wants me to do with my squad. What I want to do with my squad is use it to keep tabs on specific Pikmin, those whose affection I'm focused on increasing. That's mostly either those whose décor I don't have yet (discussed below), or those which are close to 4 hearts but not yet at the maximum level. However, the game keeps putting random Pikmin in my squad so every time I want to feed them, I have to take everyone out of my squad and then put specific Pikmin back in. I can't even tell the game to empty my squad, I have to select all but one (because my squad can't be empty), remove them, and then select the ones I want. To get to the ones that are nearly at 4 hearts, I need to sort my Pikmin by affection levels and then scroll past all of the ones that are at 4 hearts. This is really annoying. The décor ones are a bit easier to find, because I can favourite them, but it's still annoying to have to keep putting them back in. What does the game think I want to favourite them for, if not to focus on increasing their affection?

When I say the game puts random Pikmin in my squad, I don't think it is random. I think, if you have any empty slots - like if you've sent some Pikmin out on an expedition, which I do often because I'm trying to raise their affection - then any Pikmin returning from expeditions or newly hatched Pikmin will automatically go into your squad. Since expeditions include challenges (below), which 4-heart Pikmin are best suited for, 4-heart Pikmin end up back in my squad a lot. I don't want them there. I don't want to give them more nectar when there are other Pikmin to feed who can benefit more from it. I assume the game designers had something in mind when they designed this, some idea about what they thought players would want to do. I cannot figure out what it is.

Expeditions

To view expeditions, you can click on the banner at the top of the main screen. Alternatively, click on the big square showing your step count and you'll open a menu containing your Lifelog, Pikmin, Seedlings, Expeditions, and Postcards on different tabs.

There are two types of expeditions. The first kind are giant mushrooms, which you can send teams of Pikmins to attack. It's these expeditions which you can send more and more Pikmin to as you level up, and it's these expeditions on which you can earn stars. Each Pikmin you send adds to the damage you do, which, in turn, speeds up how long it takes them to destroy the mushroom. This then contributes to your star rating, which is out of three. The damage Pikmin can do is increased by their affection level, whether they have an accessory or not, and their colour. Red Pikmin do more damage against red mushrooms, blue against blue, and so on. Purple are stronger than other Pikmin, so they're generally good if you don't have more specific Pikmin. There may well be other factors that I haven't figured out yet.

I live in a small village, and while I can see there is at least one other player - because there were already flowers on some streets around here before I started planting them - I don't think they're very active. This means that, even though up to 5 people can join any challenge, I've only ever played them by myself. Even so, this is still rewarding. On the very smallest mushrooms, I've been able to get 3 stars, once my levels were in the high 20s and I had multiple high affection Pikmin to send. You can't actually fail these challenges, they'll just take longer the weaker you are.

The other type of expedition is when your Pikmin spot a seedling or piece of fruit nearby, while you're out walking. You can send some of them out to fetch it later. This is a benefit over Pokémon Go, because you don't have to get your phone out while you're walking, you can sort it out when you get home. How long the expedition takes depends on which/how many Pikmin you send and how far away it is. One beta tester has reported getting on a flight and having his faithful Pikmin take 40 days to walk back from their expedition. Most expeditions won't take that long. Pikmin walk faster than you, and they'll be heading to places you've walked past.

There's a scanner you can use once per day (main page, click on the map icon at the bottom and then it's at the top of the four options on the right) to find nearby expeditions.

Décor & Environments

Décor are accessories your Pikmin wear. They'll gain them immediately, if grown from a giant seedling, or they'll gain one once they reach the maximum affection level. The type of décor a Pikmin will gain depends on where you originally found their seedling, that is, what kind of environment. The potential environments a Pikmin can be found in are as follows;

• Restaurant
• Café
• Sweetshop
• Movie Theatre
• Pharmacy
• Zoo
• Forest
• Waterside
• Post-Office
• Art Gallery
• Airport
• Station
• Beach
• Hamburger Shop
• Mini-Mart
• Supermarket
• Bakery
• Hair Salon
• Clothing Store
• Park
• Roadside

As far as I can tell, every part of the world is assigned to one of these environments. The default seems to be roadside, and then the other kinds are assigned based on what is nearby. The map does seem to play a little fast and loose with this. Forests, for example, seem to be any kind of farmland, or greenspaces which aren't parks. That's handy - how many of us actually live near a forest? On the other hand, the area right outside my local railway station seems to only sometimes identify as a station. Maybe it's just GPS wobbles.

You can view your décor collection by going to your character page from the main screen and then clicking on your décor badge at the bottom. This lists all of the potential décor, showing you the symbols used for each environment.  You'll get this as soon as you get a piece of decor, which will be when you first grow a Pikmin from a giant seedling or when you first raise a Pikmin to 4 hearts and send them to fetch their present, whichever comes first.

The relevant symbol will also appear on your Pikmin or seedling, and it appears on your scanner, so you know what kind of environment you're in. That means you can look at which décor you're missing and then go and try to hunt down that specific kind of Pikmin, either by walking around that environment a lot, or by going to one area you know of that counts and using your scanner.

There are at least seven types of décor for each category, one for each type of Pikmin. The forest and supermarket categories have fourteen types, two for each type of Pikmin. I don't know if you get a random one of the two, or if you have to find two different types of forest and supermarket in order to get all the décor.

As of December 21st, there's a special type of décor to collect. Roadside Pikmin collected between then and January 11th (23:59 JST, so, in practical terms, the 10th) will have special Christmas stickers, instead of their normal roadside stickers. I won't be surprised if the game does this kind of event for every major holiday.

Honestly, I think collecting the various kinds of décor will be what gives the game long-term appeal for me. I literally went out this morning and did a little explore around my area to see if there were waterside and forest environments within reach. It turns out that there are, along a nice little walk down the river which I hadn't discovered before. 

Diary

Every evening, the Pikmin will ask how your day went and they'll pick out a photo you've taken that day that you might want to save. They only pick one, and I don't think there's a way to choose an alternative, you just accept or reject that one. I think I'd like it better if 3 or so Pikmin chose a photo, and I got to pick out of the 3. Maybe the Pikmin whose choice I approve could even gain a little bit of affection, that would be nice.

The diary feature is cute, but not essential for me. It annoys me that it goes off automatically at 9pm, because sometimes I open the app because I'm planning to go for a walk around then and I just want to start planting flowers before I set off. But instead of doing that, I have to quickly click through the diary thing and rush through all the options. If there is an option to change the time it automatically triggers and/or to let me trigger it manually, I can't find it. I would like to.