Developers love to put unique and delightfully bizarre twists on established genres, and there are very few examples of franchises that exemplify that better than Pikmin. You’d think you would know what to expect from a realtime strategy game for the most part, but Pikmin games play by their own rules. It’s a formula that works very well though, and soon, we’ll be getting another taste of it, with the launch of Pikmin 4.

Years after it was first confirmed to be in development, the longawaited sequel is finally almost on our doorstep, and in the leadup to its release, the developer has revealed plenty about how it’s going to refine and iterate on the franchise’s triedandtrue formula. Here, we’re going to take a look at all of those details.