Niantic, the developer behind the blockbuster Pokémon Go, has announced its next augmented reality game. His new game is once again full of cute creatures. The new Niantic game called Peridot will be all about feeding, raising and playing with magical creatures.
According to Niantic, the key premise is: “After thousands of years of sleep, the Peridots are waking up to a world very different from the one they used to roam, and they will need human help to protect them from extinction.” Practically speaking, this means an adventure where you'll take care of the creatures by training, feeding and playing with them, helping them grow from cute little babies to adulthood before eventually breeding further.
One of the defining aspects of Peridots is that each creature is unique. They all look different (with a combination of handmade assets and procedural generation) and have different personality traits. Niantic says they also have their own DNA. There are different archetypes of creatures such as the unicorn or the cheetah, which can be mixed during breeding to create completely new cute little creatures.
(And no, while they're unique digital assets, Peridots aren't NFTs. Veteran producer Ziah Fogel tells The Verge, "It's a really interesting idea and it's something we're clearly looking at. We are focused on testing and improving the core gameplay experience for
Like Niantic's previous games (including the latest Pikmin Bloom), it requires stepping outside in the real world while playing the game. This will allow you to search for a nest in the wild for breeding or meet your Peridot's needs by going for a walk or finding special food for him. It should also be noted that there were no deaths in Peridot, despite the story of preventing a species from extinction. “There is no punitive element in this game,” says Fogel. “The creatures will never die. Instead, we will try to reward people who play with their creatures more often.”
Similarly, Augmented Reality seems to be a big component of the game; As with Pokémon Go and similar games, part of the experience is seeing these fantastic creatures in the real world. Peridot is built with Niantic's Lightship platform, and the developer says the game's virtual creatures can "recognize different real-world surfaces such as dirt, sand, water, grass, and vegetation" and react accordingly.
Since the groundbreaking success of Pokémon Go, Niantic has mostly focused on other licensed stories like Pikmin, Harry Potter, and soon Transformers. In particular, Peridot will be the developer's first completely original game since Ingress. Niantic said that although the new game doesn't have a specific release date, it will launch in "select markets" in April on both the App Store and Google Play.
Kaynak
