After spending a lot of years honing their craft through pop culture IP like Pokemon and Harry Potter, Niantic has revealed their next game will be an original creation. It’s called Peridot, and the game sees players caring for the titular critters in, surprising no one, an AR game for mobiles.
It basically sounds like Tamagotchi inside of your phone, and we’re absolutely here for it.
The crux of the game is you’re tasked with making sure these Peridots, called Dots for short, don’t go extinct after they wake up in a world they don’t recognise following a millennia-long slumber. It’s a basic premise that opens the door to everything Niantic has perfected over the last handful of years.
What’s cool is that, according to Niantic, each Peridot is a unique creature. By blending developer-created assets and procedurally-generated content, the game ensures that each of your loveable friends is one-of-a-kind.
Of course, Peridot is going to be best enjoyed when outdoors, exploring the larger world. The most I’ve ever walked in my adult life was during the Pokemon Go craze, so it’ll take something pretty neat for me to replicate that. Apparently, using Niantic’s cutting-edge Lightship tech, Dots can recognise unique surfaces such as grass or sand and forage particular items from there.
Peridot is expected to soft launch later this month in beta for both iOS and Android.