Niantic, Inc. is an American software development company based in San Francisco. They are best known for developing the augmented reality mobile games Ingress and Pokémon Go. The company was formed as Niantic Labs in 2010 as an internal startup within Google.
Last year they introduced Pikmin Bloom, and now reveal another real-world adventure game titled Peridot. Peridot is a Tamagotchi-like pet game where players care for unique virtual creatures and raise them to adulthood. The game is similar to Tamagotchi in that Peridots need to be maintained. Players can pet, play, feed, and teach them new tricks to help them grow. Players can also collaborate with each other to cross-breed and expand the Peridot species for “infinite possibilities of Peridot archetypes” resembling “cheetahs, dragons, unicorns, and more.”
The Peridot creatures come to life through the camera-based augmented reality, and the Peridots are able to recognize the difference between real-world surfaces such as water, grass, sand, etc. The app can also be easily integrated with social media platforms for quick and easy photo-sharing of in-game snapshots.
Niantic just released the soft-launch of Peridot on Apple’s App Store and Google Play.
