In 2024, a curious new sound began sweeping posts online, imitating the cute little noises that Pikmin make while walking around in Pikmin Bloom, a location-based, augmented reality mobile game jointly developed by Niantic and Nintendo, launched globally in late October 2021. Although that wide launch included Korea, it wasn’t until around last November that the game truly began to surge in popularity in the country, the exact reason for which remains uncertain.

Pikmin made its first appearance in the world on October 26, 2001—over two decades ago. The first entry in the series, with legendary Nintendo game designer Shigeru Miyamoto at the helm, tells the story of Captain Olimar, who crash-lands on a mysterious planet after being struck by a meteor and then has 30 days to collect 30 spaceship parts and escape, relying on the help of creatures called Pikmin along the way. Subsequent titles in the series have followed a similar framework, featuring gameplay from the perspective of a single character in space solving puzzles to progress through the story beats. While still part of the Pikmin universe, Pikmin Bloom features a vastly different play style on mobile, lending itself more to comparisons to games like Pokémon GO than earlier entries in the Pikmin series.

Pokémon GO vs. Pikmin Bloom
Pikmin Bloom and Pokémon GO share several things in common: Both are played on smartphones, rely on location services, and emphasize collecting as a core part of the gameplay loop—not to mention that both games were developed by the same company. But the differences between the two are just as pronounced as the similarities. While Pokémon GO is a competitive game, Pikmin Bloom is a collaborative one. Players of Pokémon GO choose the team they’ll represent and battle against players from competing teams in gyms. The Pokémon have levels as well as attack and defense stats, and players play the game to boost these attributes so they can participate in more raids and take control of gyms. Unlike this play style, which focuses on winning strategies, there’s no such competition to be found in Pikmin Bloom. Instead, Pikmin simply walk around, lugging items and planting flowers as they go. While the game features something similar to raids in the form of destroying mushrooms, the bar for entry is incredibly low—just gather enough Pikmin to your squad—and any attack stat you have doesn’t factor into your rank. It’s exactly this break from traditional game design and its potentially overwhelming competition that lures so many people into the fun world of Pikmin Bloom: a cozy play loop of walking around at your leisure and expanding your collection with no fear of failure attached. The game also places a stronger emphasis on geography, because while Pokémon GO is similarly location aware, specific factors like climate, wildlife, nature, and city conditions like traffic factor in little in that older game, which is mainly limited to showing where water ends and land begins, or pinning places like PokéStops and gyms on the map so players know where to collect items. By contrast, geography plays a central role in Pikmin Bloom. Players acquire Pikmin suited to specific geographic conditions and collect and share postcards from unique locations, meaning the game guides them to seek out particular places. All of this adds up to two fundamentally different games—ones that might appear similar at first glance but with wildly divergent gameplay styles.

Pikmin Bloom rewards your every step
In Pikmin Bloom, your Pikmin are constantly on the move, hauling objects they find on the ground as they make their cute little noises and spread flowers in their wake. Watching the creatures scurry busily about—their diminutive size (smaller than the flowers they plant), the way they’re continually on the move, and their knack for working together to move bigger items—brings the industrious ant to mind, but unlike the real-world insect, your loyal followers in Pikmin Bloom aren’t the only ones keeping active. Because every step a player takes translates directly into the nectar that Pikmin drink, you need to be dedicated to getting your steps in, too.

Rewarding the player based on how many steps they’ve taken is a common tactic in mobile apps. As smartphones have evolved, so too have pedometer apps that record your steps, growing into popular tools for fitness tracking and earning micro rewards. One of the best examples of this approach is CashWalk, launched in 2017. The app became incredibly popular because of the financial rewards it pays out to users for keeping fit, using a system where it keeps a count on your lock screen of how many steps you’ve taken and grants one coin every 100 steps. On the heels of CashWalk’s success, numerous apps began similarly promising monetary rewards for users’ steps, with Korean examples including smartphone pedometers built into Toss, My Doctor, and Seoul’s Wrist Doctor 9988+. Pikmin Bloom, meanwhile, stands out conspicuously at the opposite end of the spectrum. While apps like CashWalk are inherently useful, Pikmin Bloom serves no practical purpose.

People ultimately use apps like CashWalk because of the financial incentive, accumulating points step by step so they can exchange them for money. On the flip side, smartphone users gain nothing truly tangible from playing Pikmin Bloom—they may even spend money while playing, positioning it as more of an expense than as a source of profit. And yet, a massive player base continues to invest their time into a game almost entirely about collecting various Pikmin as it continues to motivate over 1.4 million Koreans to keep walking. So, what exactly makes Pikmin Bloom so special? How does a game offer no tangible reward and still manage to captivate so many people?

Pikmin Bloom as a digital diary
While categorized in app stores as a game, Pikmin Bloom is really more like a diary. The primary feature isn’t the collecting aspect at all but the documenting. By playing Pikmin Bloom, players save a wealth of information about themselves. First, the app records your steps, all the while marking areas you’ve walked by planting flowers on the map. Additionally, players are given postcards representing the locations where they destroy mushrooms or pick up items. The game then links with the phone’s photo gallery, allowing the user to attach up to four photos when they keep a lifelog at the end of the day showing how they felt. Just like keeping a diary, players keep a record through the day’s photos and the paths they’ve walked. Each Pikmin and postcard also comes with location tidbits, with Pikmin showing where you first found them—complete with suitable costumes—and postcards similarly highlighting places a player has visited on their map. The flowers planted, Pikmin raised, and postcards collected all gradually fill the player’s map, transforming Pikmin Bloom’s AR map into a personalized diary that documents their daily life—and it becomes even more alive when playing with friends, who can share the experience in a number of different ways. They can invite each other to help destroy mushrooms, send postcards back and forth, or complete weekly missions by planting flowers or walking together. All that’s to say that Pikmin Bloom is more than just a game—it’s a whole ecosystem where players can document their lives and connect with friends, and a digital diary that helps players deepen their appreciation for the world around them while sharing a glimpse of all the amazing things they’ve discovered.

Pikmin Bloom breathes imagination into everyday spaces. By linking the real and virtual worlds, the game encourages players to see familiar places from an entirely new perspective. Walking with their Pikmin, the players themselves inject fresh meaning and stories into otherwise ordinary surroundings—a street mural becomes a postcard, and an ordinary place to grab a bite turns into that one place your chef Pikmin was born. And the effect is compounded when sharing it with friends. Consequently, playing Pikmin Bloom gives people the gift of rediscovering the everyday world through a fresh pair of eyes. The gameplay encourages players to develop a deeper affection for their surroundings, finding joy in the little things in life and providing the subtle changes that reveal special moments hidden within our daily routines that enrich life itself. This is the secret reason behind why so many people are so deeply engaged with a game that doesn’t offer its users a single cent to keep going. Perhaps Pikmin Bloom players are seeking something far more valuable than compensation. As you walk around with your Pikmin, you’ll continue to uncover the stories embedded in the landscape around you—and, indeed, in life.