the lynchpin of pikmin 1 discourse is the time limit; intensely upsetting for some and the core of the game's appeal to others. this 30 day time limit serves a dual function: it not only provides a rigid skill barrier for players to overcome in order to reach an acceptable ending, but it also enhances the fear of the unknown. pikmin 1 explicitly highlights olimar's journey as one of necessity, where his survival is never guaranteed or even feasible. he has absolutely no understanding of the planet he's landed on (though his observations form valuable foreknowledge for later series protagonists), and thus every interaction he has with the unfamiliar flora and fauna must be taken with care. the time limit synergizes with this to create a looming, uncertain objective. without a layout of the planet to observe and plan around, every single miniscule decision becomes weighed against hundreds of similiarly small decisions down the line based on their efficiency. this creates an anxious drive to further improve and strategize, with the tension of olimar's life on the line ever growing the more you commit to your actions. while this system is static and not particularly interactive from a mechanical standpoint, and pikmin 3 would toy with its implications on routing via the fruit juice system, pikmin 1's implementation remains finely tuned to maximize the fear of unfettered exploration.

it may surprise you, then, that hey pikmin expertly turns this immersive friction on its head. from the moment it begins, one can sense that this olimar is older, less naive, and more familiar with the eccentricities of faraway planets. when he crash-lands on yet another planet, there is little in the way of suspense or anxiety. immediately there is a new objective put in front of him: 30,000 sparklium needed as fuel to escape. to the casual player, this might seem like an ordinary challenge, one that scarcely can capture the emotional resonance of the original pikmin. many have struggled to stay with this game because of it. I know I fell prey to this way of thinking myself.

however, after a mere few worlds, the genius of this requirement becomes apparent. the necessary sparklium to leave the planet is vast, and the rate at which you obtain it seems slight in comparison. the old fear began setting in, just as potent and all-consuming as before. even without an explicit time limit, hey pikmin weaves the claustrophobia of pikmin 1 by fostering a profound sense of ennui. this is a game shrouded in decay, obsessed with teasing out the ending drops of lust for adventure; exhaustively interrogating olimar's exploitation of each world he encounters. its minimalist level design and mechanics follow suit. I quickly found the further in I dug that these elements combine together to make every second spent fruitlessly in the game's world to be wasted time. every empty corridor without much sparklium or moment of inelegant routing through a level reintroduced that telltale anxiety, the feeling that I might have let more precious seconds slip through my hands. in these times I felt like olimar, synapses blown from an overexposure to new, meaningless experiences while desiring only to escape the planet.

beyond my personal feelings, the game's use of its sparklium as a ludonarrative device becomes essential for routing as well, as there is a vital interplay between treasure collection and overall "speedrunning" through the critical path. while the game features a significant amount of treasure, secret stages, and other collectables, the heady brew of boredom concocted by its featureless environments and slow progression are obviously intended to ensure that no player would be able to stomach actually taking a completionist route through the game (it wouldn't make sense for olimar to want to spend more time on the planet). therefore, the player is met with a choice at every fork in their road. will they spend valuable time searching for more treasure in each level and risk spending unnecessary time playing the game when easier treasure exists later on, or will they beeline towards the exit, expecting that it will be more time efficient to gather treasure in a later level? while this may sound similar to how pikmin 1 lays out many of its interactables such as destroyable gates and bridges that may be unnecessary in the long run, hey pikmin makes a major refinement to this formula. pikmin 1's time limit is cloying and artificial; it forces the player to consider their time spent playing as wasted through the mechanic. hey pikmin manages to instill the feeling of wasted time through its own design; a much more organic solution. this wouldn't be possible if the developers didn't center the game around this simultaneously rich yet hollow sensation of weariness. its lack of design speaks volumes. this unique manipulation of the player's expectations on platformer design spoke to me; I felt a wave of relief that brought me to the verge of tears when I finally reached my sparklium goal a mere two stages before the game was set to finish, saving myself from further time spent backtracking through old levels for treasure.

hey pikmin further breaks down the series' valorization of far-flung exploration by providing a new perspective on the relationship between olimar and the pikmin. other games in the series establish olimar as a paternal figure to the pikmin, as he guides their reproduction through the onion. while the onion is briefly featured in hey pikmin, olimar's primary method of gathering pikmin to his cause is now pulling them out of marked spots in the environment. these spots often replenish when your pikmin stock gets too low, creating an uneasy sense of worthlessness to maintaining a full pack of pikmin. furthermore, pikmin procured in each level are simply discarded after the fact, with olimar extracting more and more pikmin from the environment in each level. indeed, this game goes furthest in suggesting that olimar's direction of the otherwise-sentient pikmin violates their personhood and sense of worth.

there are two main aspects to this. the first is another ludonarrative trick that the series has had up its sleeve since the first entry. this is an incredibly subtle touch by the developers, so it may not be obvious to some, but by making the pikmin AI horrifically stupid, it actually conveys the idea that the pikmin themselves are stupid. hey pikmin goes out of its way to show that olimar takes the pikmin into situations outside of their natural environment they are highly ill-equipped for cognitively, such as moving platforms, small differences in elevation, and areas near tiny enemies. this recklessness on the part of olimar juxtaposed with his inability to emote and lack of character comes off as a recharacterization of him as perhaps sociopathic. hey pikmin approaches this idea from another direction as well; in what seems like a homage to the strong anti-capitalist themes of pikmin 2, olimar uses the pikmin cast aside at the end of each level as a task force for resource extraction in other parts of the planet. this small between-level management minigame reeks of colonial exploitation, casting a new shadow at olimar's "activities" on each planet he visits. while pikmin 2 analyzed the economic implications of resource extraction from the untainted wilderness, hey pikmin instead centers those desperate workers forced into servitude at the fringes of empire.

vastly overlooked by the majority of the gaming public thanks to its late release in the life of the 3ds and seeming low-budget status, hey pikmin is a crowning aesthetic achievement that none should miss. it brilliantly unravels the myths behind pikmin as a series while simultaneously building upon the ideas of its forebears. pass it by only if you want to miss a shocking portrait of the listlessness and apathetic abuse at the heart of exploration. a forward step for the medium; sleep paralysis in video game form.

Positive note - the little cutscenes you get of Pikmin doing Pikmin things are cute and give those little flower creatures a lot of character that you don't see as much in the mainline games, and that charm did a lot of heavy lifting here.

It's a shame then those same cutscenes kill all momentum you might have in every level in an already glacial-speed platformer. I feel like there are nuggets of good ideas here which I think could have been turned into a decent puzzle platformer-squad management combination but it's something that's barely explored and most of your time devolves into slowly wading through a level and bashing the screen throwing your Pikmin from that stage (usually of just a single type) at any enemy that appears with no thought whatsoever. Some levels have two types of Pikmin (and maybe one has three!) but I only counted a single occasion where this change required any additional thought.

It takes 8 worlds (per world that's 5 stages, one boss encounter, one bonus level and four puzzle levels) for any semblance of challenge to appear and only then because of the risk of falling off a stage and being sent back to the very beginning.

At least it's better than Chibi-Robo Zip Lash.

Played about 3 worlds, it's about exactly what you'd expect to get by translating Pikmin's helper management to 2D. I don't think you could get anything out of this unless you're a kid, it's very mundane and low on the difficulty spectrum. Its ideas for 'challenges' are shit like, oh, there's a collectible in this one spot and you can't backtrack to get it, now you gotta replay the level all the way from the beginning to get it now that you know where it is. It also has Nintendo bosses, which uh, don't belong in a Pikmin game.

Actually the more I think about it this game is actually just bad, people were right about it, it's flat-out boring and mind-numbing. Literally only for kids.

A bit out of character for me, but I gave up on this game after about five hours. Although I commend Nintendo for trying to branch the Pikmin franchise into a different genre, there really didn't seem to be any unique ideas that Pikmin brought over to platforming. Maybe if I did a little research I could prove the following wrong, but I feel like this game might be Nintendo’s creative floor.

At times, it felt like I was playing a new iteration of Yoshi’s Island, but don’t read that as a compliment, quite the opposite actually. Where Yoshi’s Island gives you a charming and relaxed romp through various worlds, Hey! Pikmin just doubles down on relaxation to the point where the player is at times subdued.

The player is never placed in a situation with any stakes. The largest levels of decision making equate to should I take this detour to get more collectables or should I just keep moving towards the end of the stage. Though there are different Pikmin with different uses, the game limits which Pikmin you have access to, so you are never thinking about any unique applications of the tools at your disposal. All of this could magically change after the point where I stopped, but after five hours of droning onwards without joy it was clear the game wasn’t respecting my time.

If you’re looking for a chance to solve puzzles, apply critical thinking skills, or simply register brain activity on a fMRI; you may want to look elsewhere. If you’re looking for a way to unwind just before bed or a game to autopilot while watching a program, then maybe Hey! Pikmin is right up your alley.

this being attached to pikmin is where a lot of the anger comes from, but even completely ignoring that it’s an absurdly boring game that overstays its welcome. there’s some small glimmers of fun (namely any level that focuses on the pink pikmin and changes things up) and the bosses are overall fine, but really only the final boss gets interesting and even then it’s nothing particularly special.

there isn’t anything awful about this game, it has some of the pikmin charm the series is known for like the cute little mid level cutscenes and the names/log entries of treasures. that isn’t enough to fix the insane amount of boredom this game has, if you think the concept sounds vaguely fun just go play kirby mass attack. it’s an infinitely more fun 2d platformer where you throw a ton of little guys around. this game sucked!

Hey! This sucks.

Alright, that's mean, but I couldn't resist. Unfortunately, it encapsulates my thoughts on this game. This is another game by Arzest, who I best know for bastardizing Yoshi's Island (as "Artoon", originally) and who most people best know for Balan Wonderworld. Insofar as I'm concerned, Arzest understands Pikmin about as well as they understand Yoshi.

Adapting Pikmin to a 2D platformer is an interesting idea. I'm not necessarily opposed to this, much as it reminded me of the ill-fated Chibi-Robo: Zip Lash, because there are a lot of interesting ways Pikmin's puzzle RTS mechanics could adapt into a platformer setting. I'm not fond of Olimar's Smash Bros. interpretation, but Brawl has the start of an idea with the Pikmin Chain - theoretically you can do things with that, Bomb Rock puzzles, elemental affinities, weight and flight, etc etc etc. problem is, Hey! Pikmin rarely goes for any of that. Most puzzles in the game are of the lock-and-key variety; bring X Pikmin [of Y type] here to solve the puzzle. This wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing - lock-and-key puzzles are your bread and butter in video games - except that the game has little interest in iterating upon its own mechanical challenges. By way of example, there are these optional challenge rooms throughout the game. I wasn't really challenged by the first few of these, but I figured the game would ramp up the difficulty once it established what it was going for. But in fact, I found the final challenge room exactly as difficult as the first one had been.

Pikmin is a series I love for its quiet touches and moments. Especially in the first game, everything is so understated: you aren't on a big, bombastic adventure, but rather a fight for survival on a hostile world. Later games step away from this, but there's always a sense of trying to hold onto little things in a bigger universe. The Piklopedia in 2, the team chatter in 3, and I haven't played 4 as of this writing.

Hey! Pikmin doesn't seem to understand this. It has the shape of these ideas with things like Olimar's monster/treasure notes, but it doesn't really get them. It doesn't get Olimar. There's the understanding that Olimar is a salaryman who does everything he can to support his family, but... like, he sounds whiny about it here. The game knows that Olimar should fundamentally misunderstand the Earth treasures he comes across, but then the game lets him understand what humans are (for goodness' sake, he comes across a snowglobe with Santa Claus, and he recognizes that that's what a person looks like. That feels like that breaks so many rules. To say nothing about Donkey Kong Land, specifically, being canon to this game).

Then there are the little skits with the Pikmin. Every so often, you'll be treated to a little scene of the Pikmin doing something cute in the level. I really don't like this. There's an increased emphasis on Pikmin domesticity throughout side material that rubs me the wrong way. They are a hunter-gatherer people who must be accustomed to the hardships of their way of life. I'm fine seeing them as a curious child-like people in the context of something like the Piklopedia treasures, where it's clear that the Pikmin are leveraging the free time they have under Olimar's leadership and exploring the elements of their world with their newly-afforded freetime. Not like how it's done here, when in the middle of every level, there are scenes - sometimes multiple per level - of the Pikmin tripping or pushing each other around or waving at each other or SOMEthing like that. Stuff clearly engineered to make the player go "awwwww lookit em". It's such a blatant, cloying attempt to turn the Pikmin into Minions that I just got annoyed seeing the little guys do their thing (this coming from someone who's generally tolerant of the Minions).

Two things I like to this game, or at least one I like and one I am at an understanding with. To start with the latter, I don't love any of the bosses, and in point of fact I rather hate how over-the-top dramatic the final boss is (they've been hinting at him the whole game!!!!! Guys this is the ultimate pimpkin fight!!!!!!!!!!!) - but I do think the first boss fight, against an ordinary Red Bulborb, is an interesting concession. There was no real way to communicate the feeling of fighting an enemy like a Bulborb in the normal gameplay of a 2D platformer, so as weird as it sounds, I'm okay with it as an early game boss. Makes for a decent enough chiasm with Emperor Bulblax being one of the late game bosses, too.

The one level I really like is "The Lonely Tower", which comes about halfway into the game. As a change of pace, Olimar starts the level completely alone. You don't get any Pikmin until a decent way through the level, after you've already had to do some platforming to scale the titular tower. It's the one time I feel like the game gets Pikmin's tone, and I honestly think that'd be fascinating design to explore in the context of a mainline Pikmin game. As essential as the Pikmin mechanics are to series identity, there's something to be said for the moods a player can experience by their absence.

If more of Hey! Pikmin had this level of thought, it'd have the potential to be an understated entry in such an understated series. As it is? Stay away unless you're a die-hard fan, and even then, don't expect much.

After the New Play Control! versions of Pikmin and Pikmin 2 showed how precision aiming can improve the experience of tactical organization and management inherent to the series, an entry on one of the touchscreen-based handheld systems of Nintendo would seem a no-brainer. In a way, that is eventually what we got with Hey! Pikmin, but its design philosophies are so removed from the core conventions of the series that it’s hardly comparable to the image that comes to mind when one says “Pikmin on the 3DS.” The great irony here is that Hey! Pikmin is a 2D platformer, one so committed to this divergent identity that it refuses to utilize the stereoscopic 3D capabilities of the hardware, despite the obvious array of opportunities in both the numerous cutscenes seen throughout the game as well as to add a sense of depth to the design of the levels, if only for the sake of more immersive aesthetics. Setting aside any misplaced expectations, though, the prospect of a side-scrolling Pikmin platformer isn’t inherently off. In fact, much of the baseline mechanics of Hey! Pikmin’s design congruently suit the congenial spirit of mainline games. It’s never really enough to justify itself, however, as beyond the relatively commendable translation of throwing mechanics and squadron management from the console games to the handheld, Hey! Pikmin offers shockingly little in terms of new or interesting interpretations of the core ideals, and feels far too drawn out and lethargic for how simple it ultimately is.

Hey! Pikmin’s primary issue is just how needlessly slow the whole experience is. From overly long load times, to the stodgy controls and movements, and the constant interruptions of cloying cutscenes introducing new batches of Pikmin several times each level, everything feels designed to arbitrarily moderate your pacing. While the intent is clearly to maintain the more relaxed and methodical nature of the series through the restriction of movement, the lack of flexibility takes so much of the control out of the player’s hand that the whole of the experience more or less feels like you’re on rails. Sure, there are secrets to be had by uncovering alternate routes and hidden exits, but so many levels are designed around pushing you forward without a way to backtrack, often requiring you to replay a level entirely in order to get to the secret items. Rarely are these items generally worth going for either, as only occasionally do the puzzles around them challenge you enough to merit interaction. Seeing as you don’t need all the treasures to beat the game (as is tradition with Pikmin) the satisfaction in recovering these items really needs to be its own reward, but due to the nature of simply obtaining an object as soon as Olimar is close enough, you often don’t even need the assistance of the Pikmin to obtain many of the items, rendering the very nature of the gameplay moot more often than not.

The novelty of collecting treasures has also somewhat run its course now. There’s still the occasional joy in collecting an otherwise ordinary item and seeing its humorous name cataloged, but the tedious nature of collecting makes it all feel so played out this time. It doesn’t help that the motivation to collect these treasures now is rather contrived. The mission here is to convert all the objects we find into enough “Sparklium” to fuel the ship, a kind of nonsense objective designed with only enough veneer to attempt to justify the conventions of artifice. It’s even more meaningless after you realize the set amount you’re tasked to obtain can’t even be used until you rescue the Sparklium Converter from the final boss, which itself can’t be accessed until making your way through all eight sectors of the game in a linear progression of uninspired, forgettable levels. Giving the player more agency when it comes to providing a path forward was always a strength of previous Pikmin games, so to restrain the player so severely here is quite the odd choice. You don’t even have control over the Pikmin you can use in any given level, as they’re all encountered along the way, with any you keep alive by the end going off to a separate location to slowly harvest small quantities of Sparklium while you progress in the following levels.

And yet, it’s difficult to bemoan Hey! Pikmin as being outright awful. It’s not a good game by any metrics, but it’s largely acceptable on multiple fronts, and even has a handful of positive qualities in need of acknowledging. The implementation of the 3DS’s dual screens for platforming and navigation is far more comprehensive than most titles on the console, or even its originating predecessor. The levels, though simple, are pleasantly short, and their straightforward design allows for a relaxing, if uninspired, progression through the game. And, aside from being egregiously slow, the actual feel of the platforming is responsive and positive, ensuring that you’re able to traverse the levels with relative ease and little dysfunction. Beyond that, though, it’s hard to see any further qualities for the title. Hey! Pikmin generates the majority of its good will by virtue of not being actively discouraging to play, but at the same time it does little to inspire the player to engage further with its gameplay beyond the hollow proclamation of asserting your completion of the game. It’s such a shallow endeavor, evidenced very early on, and never improving upon its meager offerings even as you near the end. At best, it’s a serviceable distraction, peppered with barely enough charm and intrigue to sustain short bursts of your attention, such that you may, theoretically, pick it up enough times in passing curiosity to complete it. But the belabored pacing, threadbare mechanics, homogenous level design, and scarce framing all but undermine its mediocre framework, resulting in a game that just narrowly passes for “playable.”