Hello, Good morning and welcome to another fine edition of What We’re Playing; our weekly round up everything that’s kept us glued (or not) to our TV screens, desktop monitors, portable displays and whatever else you crazy kids are playing games on these days.
So, what have you been playing over the last seven days?
Playing the new Stardew Valley 1.6 update coöp with the kiddos and replaying the excellent original Slime Rancher in my solo time before starting the sequel that just dropped.
On mobile, nothing actively playing, just the “walking companion” Pikmin Bloom, which continues to actually succeed at gamifying active transit, daily walks, and exploring public art around the city.
Pikmin Bloom is a 'Pokemon Go style game right? Might pick that up for the kids school run if it can scratch a similar itch.
Bloom is more about walking and passively planting flowers to help your Pikmin grow. It doesn’t matter much where you walk although there are some specific objects in the world you can interact with.
Go is more like you have to seek out a pokemon to catch it or go find a gym, and some Pokemon only show up in certain parts of the world. It’s vastly less accessible to people than Pikmin bloom is.
Pokémon Go didn’t click for me, Bloom is pretty different. Same company, though, and built on the same map. The main loop in Bloom is walk while planting flower » makes big flowers bloom » collect fruit » feed Pikmin » gather flowers petals / seeds to replant. There’s also a secondary loop where you send Pikmin to fight mushrooms, and the seasonal event loops that give you rare Pikmin. But the parts where you’re actively using the app are separate from the walking around parts, is the point.
Pikmin bloom was fun! I got to level 41 and moved on cuz if you live in the suburbs like me there aren’t enough flowers to bloom or special mushrooms to battle, so i literally have to walk many thousands of steps or drive somewhere densely populated or spend real money. Its a shame cuz it was fun on the lower levels but plateaued pretty hard for me after level 40.
I’m curious how you’ll like slime rancher 2. I got it in EA some time ago, and it was too similar to the first one for my taste. Wonder if they’ve added more at launch to help set it apart and introduce new ideas.
Bloom has opened up now that you can friend randos, and invite friends to join mushroom battles. I have a couple dozen people from all over the world that I share mushrooms with and send postcards to. If you want to get back into it, there’s !pikminbloomapp@lemmy.world here on Lemmy for it.
(edited to include link)
SR2, my daughter is already playing it. She thinks the news slimes are cute, but yeah, it doesn’t look that different from the first one. The first one was so tight, though, I don’t feel bad about throwing some more money at the dev.