Pokemon Go developer announces new Tamagotchi-like AR game Peridot

Niantic, developer of Pokemon Go, has announced its next augmented reality game, Peridot. It is dedicated to the care and breeding of magical creatures.

The Verge describes Peridot as "Pokemon Go crossed with Tamagotchi, with some elements of the real world and augmented reality added."

The plot of the game reads:

• In practice, this means that you will take care of the creatures, teaching them, feeding and playing with them, helping them grow from cute babies into adults.
• One of the defining aspects of Peridot is that each creature is unique. They all look different - thanks to a combination of handcrafted assets and procedural generation - and have different personality traits.
• There are different archetypes of creatures like the unicorn or the cheetah, and they can be cross-bred during breeding to create brand new adorable little critters.

• As with previous Niantic games, much of the gameplay requires entering the real world. For example, to search for food or nests in the wild, necessary for reproduction.
• In AR mode, virtual creatures can recognize various real-world surfaces such as dirt, sand, water, grass, or foliage and react accordingly.
• It should also be noted that, despite the storyline about saving the species from extinction, there is no death in Peridot - creatures will never die.

Now the developers are focused on testing and refining the core gameplay to make it really interesting and accessible to everyone. There is no exact release date yet, but in some countries, the pre-launch could take place as early as April.

Peridot will be the first completely original Niantic game since Ingress.