Peridot, the new creature feature from Pokémon Go maker Niantic, is launching worldwide on May 9.
Pre-registrations are live now through the App Store and Google Play.
Niantic’s new game has location-based activities like its other titles, but appears to go deeper on the ‘Dots’ you collect and care for. Niantic describes them as magical creatures that “eat, sleep, play with toys, explore their environment, get bored, develop unique personalities and are always in need of a loving adopter.”
Each Dot is unique, says Niantic, and will inherit characteristics from their parents as they get cross-bred with Dots from other players.
Peridot will be the second new launch of the year for Niantic, following on from NBA All-World, a mix of officially-licensed basketball action and the developer’s trademark location-based play. As we reported last month, NBA All-World has struggled to make an impact, however, with just $160k in IAP revenue and 1.8m downloads after its first month on the market.
Niantic has also said recently that another big-name location based game, Marvel World of Heroes, would be launched globally “later this year.”
Little is know about Marvel World of Heroes right now, but in a brief Q&A on Niantic’s site, senior producer Lyza Faylona said: “I love MMORPGs, so I’m most excited about bringing that to the real world. To arrive at a location, view and interact with it through the lens of a Marvel Super Hero is what I’m really excited about.”
Lead game designer Neil Melville added: “We aren’t content with augmenting reality with a single version of the Marvel Universe, and will let you travel to multiple alternate realities in the Marvel Multiverse to engage with different characters and stories in the same location.”
Niantic laid off around 90 staff last summer, and closed four new game projects, including a Transformers game. It also took on a $300m investment last November to build what it calls a ‘real-life metaverse’.
